Alfred Bunn (1798-1860) was the controversial theatre manager whose pretensions to flat versification resulted in the contemptuous nickname ‘the Poet Bunn’ awarded him by the magazine Punch. Bunn started in theatre management young, leasing the Theatre Royal Birmingham from 1819 to 1824, and in 1819 marrying the actress Margaret Agnes Somerville. He was stage manager for Robert Elliston at Drury Lane for the 1823-1824 season, and leased and managed theatres in Dublin and Cork in 1830. He returned to Drury Lane as stage manager, and in 1833 ambitiously leased both Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres, resulting in condemnation for his eclectic programming, and in December 1839 his bankruptcy. In 1835 he relinquished the lease of Covent Garden, and of Drury Lane in 1839.

One of Bunn’s main concerns was the establishment of English opera and in 1837 Bunn leased the English Opera House. Despite his bankruptcy he leased Drury Lane again in October 1843 where he concentrated on opera and ballet and produced eleven new operas by Michael Balfe, Julius Benedict, Vincent Wallace, George Macfarren, and Louis Henry Lavenu. By far the most famous was Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1843) for which he wrote the libretto. The heroine's ballad ‘I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls’ achieved extraordinary popularity. Throughout his career Bunn wrote or contributed to eleven libretti, seven set by Balfe, but made many enemies, most famously William Macready who denounced him a ‘damned scoundrel’, James Robertson Planché who described his management as ‘sheer gambling’ and his taste as ‘deplorable’, Charles Dickens, and Jenny Lind whom Bunn sued in 1848 for breach of contract. His final season of management at Drury Lane was October 1851 to May 1852, after which he undertook lecture tours but died in poverty in 1860.