Wright, Thomas, antiquary, was born near Ludlow, Shropshire, 21st August 1810, the son of a Quaker who had migrated from Bradford. From Ludlow grammar-school he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1834. He had already contributed to Fraser's and other magazines, when in 1836 he went to London, and at once commenced the career of a man of letters. In 1837 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1838 was one of the two founders of the Camden Society, as in 1843 of the British Archaeological Association. He also took an active part in the formation of the Percy and Shakespeare
Societies, and for each of these, from time to time, edited volumes. In 1842 he was elected a corresponding member of the French Académie des Inscriptions, and he was also a member of other learned societies on the Continent and in America. He died at Chelsea, 23d December 1877.
From 1836 onwards he published eighty-four works, including, of course, translations and works edited for societies. The following may be mentioned: Biographia Britannica Literaria (2 vols. 1842-46); Essays on the Literature, Popular Superstitions, and History of England in the Middle Ages (2 vols. 1846); England under the House of Hanover, Illustrated from the Caricatures of the Day (2 vols. 1848); Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (2 vols. 1851); History of Ludlow (1852); The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon (1852); History of Ireland (3 vols. 1854); Wanderings of an Antiquary (1854); Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English (2 vols. 1857); History of France (3 vols. 1856-62); Political Poems and Songs, from the Accession of Edward III. to that of Richard III. (2 vols. 1859-61); Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (2 vols. 1858), being a collection of mediæval tales from the only known manuscript of the same, discovered by Wright in the library of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow; Essays on Archaeological Subjects (2 vols. 1861); History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages (1861); A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (1865); Womankind in Western Europe (1869); Uriconium (1872; see WROXETER); and Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century (2 vols. 1877).