William Linley. Lithograph by W. P. Sherlock after J. Lonsdale.

William Linley (1771-1835), composer and author. A clerk with the East India Company in Madras, he returned to England in 1795. For the comic opera The honeymoon (1797) and the entertainment The pavilion (1799) Linley wrote not only the music but also the words. His next four sessions failed and by 1800 he had to return to India. He wrote his first novel, Forbidden apartments in that year. In 1801 he became paymaster at Vellore, only a year later to return to London. Linley's musical output is almost entirely vocal, and consists mainly of songs and glees, only a relatively small number of which were ever published