Thomas Frognall Dibdin

Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847) was an English bibliographer and clergyman, born in Calcutta and educated at Oxford. As librarian to Earl Spencer at Althorp he catalogued one of the great private libraries of Europe, and his Bibliomania, Bibliographical Decameron and Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour recorded the collecting mania of the Regency with a mixture of learning and comedy. He was a founder of the Roxburghe Club in 1812 and edited Ames's Typographical Antiquities. His scholarship was often careless, but his books, lavishly printed and illustrated, are themselves collected.