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GILBERT AND SULLIVAN

Part 1: The Correspondence, Diaries, Literary Manuscripts and Prompt Copies of W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) from the British Library, London

Publisher's Note

"The world will be a long while forgetting Gilbert and Sullivan. Every Spring their great works will be revived. … They made enormous contributions to the pleasure of the race. They left the world merrier than they found it. They were men whose lives were rich with honest striving and high achievement and useful service."
H L Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun, 30 May 1911

If you want to understand Victorian culture and society, then the Gilbert and Sullivan operas are an obvious starting point. They simultaneously epitomised and lampooned the spirit of the age.

Their productions were massively successful in their own day, filling theatres all over Britain. They were also a major Victorian cultural export. A new show in New York raised a frenzy at the box office and Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Feb 1886) stated that the "two men have the power of attracting thousands and thousands of people daily for months to be entertained”.

H L Mencken's comments of 1911 have proved true. Gilbert & Sullivan societies thrive all over the world and new productions continue to spring up in the West End and on Broadway, in Buxton and Harrogate, in Cape Town and Sydney, in Tokyo and Hong Kong, in Ottawa and Philadelphia.

Some of the topical references may now be lost, but the basis of the stories in universal myths and the attack of broad targets such as class, bureaucracy, the legal system, horror and the abuse of power are as relevant today as they ever were.

Two of the key ingredients for the success of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were the libretti and the careful stage management of each production. Both of these areas can be examined in detail with the sources provided here. Anyone wishing to understand how the works came about, and how Gilbert envisaged that they should be produced, will find a wealth of material here.


There is also much on the tensions that grew between Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte and on the problems encountered regarding unlicensed foreign productions of their works.

Part 1 features:

Drafts & synopses of plays (mostly autograph and with much radically different from the final versions) including Topsy-Turveydom, Sweethearts, Tom Cobb, HMS Pinafore, Patience, The Mikado, The Yeoman of the Guard, Foggerty's Fairy, The Gondoliers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Utopia Limited, His Excellency, The Grand Duke, The Fairy's Dilemma, The Fortune Hunter, Fallen Fairies and The Hooligan. These amply illustrate Gilbert’s working methods developing from an anecdotal story to an expanded version with summaries of conversations, through overhauls and corrections to a working copy.

Gilbert's own prompt copies, partly privately printed, of plays and libretti with autograph notes giving property plots, plans of sets and stage directions with occasional corrections. Some of the plays covered are: Dulcamara (his first publicly performed work - a burlesque), Robert the Devil, Princess Ida, Pygmalion and Galatea (a work for which he has said to have received £40,000), Charity, Gretchen, The Ne'er do Weel, Comedy and Tragedy, Trial By Jury (his first collaboration with Sullivan), The Sorcerer, HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, Ruddigore, The Yeoman of the Guard, The Gondoliers, His Excellency and Fallen Fairies. These are vital for any company wishing to understand Gilbert’s original staging.

Drawings by Gilbert for the Bab Ballads and Songs of a Savoyard and photographs recording costumes and stage settings for The Fairy's Dilemma, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Comedy and Tragedy, The Sorcerer, HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Ruddigore, Utopia Limited, The Grand Duke, His Excellency, The Mountebanks and The Hooligan, as well as his house at Grim's Dyke and scenes from Japanese life.

General correspondence, 1866-1911 (featuring letters from many of Gilbert’s collaborators, discussing travelling productions, lighting, music and many other issues); papers relating the construction and leasing of the Garrick Theatre, 1888-1896 (owned by Gilbert); box office returns for Gretchen and The Mountebanks; papers regarding the production of Engaged in Canada and the USA, 1879; the visitors' book from Grim's Dyke, 1906-1936; and diaries, 1878 and 1904-1911.


Records of Gilbert and Sullivan's visit to New York in 1879 with records of the weekly takings and expenses of HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, 1879-1881.

These papers enable us to understand the unique contribution that Gilbert made to Victorian theatre, with his attention to staging and diction. They are indispensable for any study of Gilbert & Sullivan, their productions and their impact on Victorian society. They will also be of great interest to a wide range of scholars investigating issues as diverse as Victorian attitudes to race, orientalism, and the transmission of cultural values and to Theatre historians studying the antecedents of Shaw, Wilde and Pirandello.

“[Gilbert was] a dramatist who was the most important author of stage comedy between Sheridan and Shaw; a dramatist produced and stimulated by Victorian theatre, but transcending it.”
Jane Stedman

writing in W S Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and his Theatre, 1996

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