In this volume I have endeavoured to bring up to date the study of early nineteenth-century English drama originally issued, in two volumes, in 1930. For the most part, the pages of the main text have been left standing, but numerous small corrections or modifications have been made throughout: supplementary notes provide references to books and articles published on the theatre of this period during the past twenty years.

The chief contributions recently made to dramatic history during this half-century have been concerned with identifying authors of dramas which I had listed as anonymous and with adding titles not recorded; and as a result in the Hand-list of Plays I have been forced to fall back on a compromise. Both from new material which I personally have gathered and from the contributions of others many alterations are here introduced into the Hand-list itself, and at the same time nearly a hundred pages of supplementary information have been added.

In the preparation of this supplementary information and in correcting the main Hand-list some dozen articles have proved particularly useful. One or two of these are concerned with the work of individual authors, such as James Sandoe's study of the plays written by T. J. Dibdin (University of Colorado Studies, 1940, i, 205–20) and W. P. Bowman's study of the plays written by George Soane (Modern Language Notes, 1939, liv, 278–9).