BBB Etymology - Stealing one's thunder

John Dennis (1657-1734), best remembered as a critic but also an ineffective poet and dramatist, wrote a dismal tragedy called Appius and Virginia (1709) for which he invented a device for making stage thunder. His bitterness at the play's early demise was enhanced when he heard his own thunder-device being used in a subsequent production of someone else's play. The closely-knit and often malicious literary world of Queen Anne's London would have enjoyed his complaint that his thunder had been stolen - and was in greater demand than his play.