In 1855, John Kells Ingram, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, extended his Chair of Oratory at the college to include a remit in English Literature. In London at the time Delia Bacon was living in Spring Street, Paddington, at the home of a greengrocer, Mr Walker. Over the next several years, Ingram lectured on various literary topics, including the plays of Shakespeare, before being succeeded in the Trinity Chair by Edward Dowden, who would publish, in 1875, the highly acclaimed Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art – one of the standard Victorian works on the poet's career and writings. Eighteen years prior to the appearance of Dowden's book Delia Bacon had, of course, as Samuel Schoenbaum nicely puts it, unleashed ‘a streak of crazed lightning’ across the literary sky by publishing a study claiming that Shakespeare had not actually written the plays attributed to him. Bacon gained – and continues, of course, if indirectly, to gain – many followers.