Book description
The author of The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, H. M.S. Pinafore
and the other great Savoy libretti, W. S. Gilbert was witty, caustic
and disrespectful, one of the celebrities of the late Victorian age.
He wrote the most brilliantly inventive plays of of his time, and with
Arthur Sullivan he wrote comic operas that defined the age. He became
richer and more famous than he could have imagined, but at the price
of his artistic freedom. In his time Gilbert had been many things:
journalist, theatre critic, cartoonist, comic poet, stage director,
writer of short stories, dramatist. Andrew Crowther examines W. S.
Gilbert from all these angles, using a wealth of sources to tell the
story of an angry and quarrelsome man, discontented with himself and
the age he lived in, raging at life's absurdities and laughing at
them. In this book Gilbert's glorious , contradictory character is
explored and brought vividly to life.
