BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1ST BARONET

born Nov. 30, 1762, Wootton, Kent, Eng. died Sept. 8, 1837, Geneva English writer and genealogist chiefly important as the editor of rare Elizabethan and 17th-century texts, notably the 17th-century writer Edward Phillips' critical miscellany Theatrum Poetarum (1800; Theatre of Poets) and Robert Greene's autobiographical pamphlet Greenes groatsworth of witte . . . (1813). Persuaded that he and his family were heirs to a barony, he filed a suit in the courts but lost the case, though he never gave up the claim. He edited Arthur Collins' Peerage of England, inserting a statement about his supposed right. He was made a baronet in 1814, thereafter living mostly out of England.