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W.S. Gilbert – Kidnapped!
Sometimes real life imitates art. Or it inspires art. William S. Gilbert’s plots involving stolen babies were inspired by his own life: As a baby, he was kidnapped by bandits. When Gilbert was not yet 2 years old (as the story goes), and a few months before his sister Jane was born in October 1838, his parents were traveling around the Continent and they stopped in Naples, Italy. In Naples, his parents had hired a maid to look after their young son. As the maid and baby were out on a walk, a couple of men approached her and said that the “English gentleman” wanted his child returned to him right…
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Shopping — Victorian Style
Women of the Victorian era enjoyed shopping as much as women do today. By the middle of the 19th century, shopping had evolved into a way for middle-class Victorian women to get out and explore the city without male companions. The first prototype of the shopping mall might be said to have been the Great Exhibition of 1851, which displayed consumer goods from around the globe. A Victorian woman in the 1860s on a shopping expedition in London would probably head toward the West End, where the shops catered to fashionable upper-middle-class ladies. She might also go to Regent Street, which was designed as a promenade and shopping area with…
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Victorian Tweets to Tickle Your Fancy
I browsed around Twitter today, and found the following gems! If you’re looking for some interesting, pretty, funny and inspiring tidbits of information, check out these tweets: Victorian Cat Funerals https://twitter.com/Felix_Ineptias/status/690755602310569984 Victorian Samplers embroidered by young girls https://twitter.com/fashionatbowes/status/690848757261451264 Digital Dickens-Finding Boz online https://twitter.com/LoyolaVictorian/status/712367387656454146 A 1898 Critic’s Choice List of Best Novels – Have you read them all? https://twitter.com/michaeljwaldron/status/661616977543364608 Victorian Spinning Tops, now in GIF form https://twitter.com/drreznicek/status/661890422382333952 Ode to Kate Greenaway, Victorian illustrator https://twitter.com/LadyReedmore/status/607056679679737857 Victorian Love Letters from a Valet to a Housekeeper https://twitter.com/rosalindmwhite/status/722462413682044929 Newly discovered Charlotte Bronte poem https://twitter.com/VictStudies/status/666306557995589636 Victorian Halloween Costumes https://twitter.com/VictStudies/status/651085330163101696 Why Victorians thought women taking Tea Breaks was…
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W.S. Gilbert: Writerly Beginnings
What is to become of me? Am I destined to revolutionize the art of comic writing? Am I the man who is destined to write the burlesques and extravaganzas of the future? Are managers of theaters and editors of light literature doomed to fall prostrate at my feet in humble obeisance? Is it to me that society at large must look for amusement for the next (say) forty years? To these questions I unhesitatingly reply, “I am! They are! It is!” – William S. Gilbert, writing as “A Trembling Beginner,” in The Art of Parody, Fun (9 Sept 1865) In 1861, W.S. Gilbert was a 25-year-old clerk in…
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10 Fun Facts about Gilbert and Sullivan
NOTE: I corrected some erroneous information in this post, which was pointed out to me by an alert reader! Thanks for the heads-up. Sir William Schwenk Gilbert, born 18 November 1836, originally trained to become a barrister. He was elected to the Northern Circuit and prosecuted his first case in Liverpool in March 1866, against an Irish woman accused of stealing a coat. His account of the proceedings, from Gilbert and Sullivan A Dual Biography, by Michael Ainger, went as follows: “No sooner had I got up than the old dame, who seemed to realise that I was against her, began shouting, ‘Ah, ye divil, sit down. Don’t listen to…
