Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald (1834-1925) was a British author and critic, painter and sculptor. He was called to the Irish bar and was for a time crown prosecutor on the northeastern circuit. After moving to London, he became a contributor to Charles Dickens's magazine, Household Words, and later dramatic critic for the Observer and the Whitehall Review. Among his many writings are numerous biographies and works relating to the history of the theatre. He wrote Life of Sterne (1864), Charles Lamb (1866), Life of David Garrick (1868), The Romance of the English Stage (1874), Life of George IV (1881), A New History of the English Stage (1882), The Kembles; Life of William IV (1884), Lives of the Sheridans (1886), The Book Fancier (1886), A Day's Tour (1887), Life of James Boswell with an Account of His Sayings, Doings, and Writings (1891), Henry Irving: A Record of Twenty Years at the Lyceum (1893), Memoirs of an Author (1895), Pickwickian Manners and Customs (1897), Pickwickian Studies (1899), John Forster (1903), Boswell's Autobiography (1912), Memoirs of Charles Dickens (1914) and Worldlyman (1914). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.