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The most significant obstacle to a full understanding and balanced evaluation of the work of John Thelwall has always been the absence of a complete modern biography. The two early biographies (by Cecil Thelwall 1837 and Charles Cestre 1906) are both out-of-date, and extremely partial; leaving out almost half of Thelwall's life, they leave the impression that his later elocutionary and literary achievements are irrelevant, thereby contributing to the neglect they were intended to overcome. The shorter biographical sketches included in more recent studies have begun to compensate, but are necessarily limited by and to the specific contexts or subjects that they address. As new archival information has emerged, it is finally possible to imagine writing a comprehensive biography of one of the most dramatic, varied and heroic lives in British history, but such a book is still several years away. In the meanwhile, however, there is a urgent need to gather, collate and circulate existing biographical and bibliographical information, in an accessible location and a clear format, to serve the growing community of Thelwall Studies.
This chronology is also a bibliography, and it goes beyond dates, events and writings to include: locations where Thelwall lived or visited (revealing the transnational range of his intellect and the persistence of his peripatetic habits), media in which he worked (lectures are included as well as publications, journalism and unpublished writing), his correspondence (though much has been lost, what remains gives some idea of the scope of his networks), related events (with an emphasis on political and literary contexts and publications), and locations where primary texts can be found (since so much of the archive remains unpublished and scattered). The chief sources used to construct the timeline are also given, with a key to abbreviations (below).