Abstract

He Was an Englishman

The article presents information on the book "W.S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters," by Sidney Dark and Rowland Grey. This book about "Gilbert of the Immortal Gilbert and Sullivan" contains many interesting facts, photographs, letters, anecdotes, dates, out of which a biography might very well have been made. The authors show Gilbert in the theater, at home, as lawyer, artist, friend; and yet somehow, perhaps because of the very accumulation of details, they fail to vivify the character of the man who will live a long time in the affections of many because he wrote the "Tab Ballads" and the Savoy opera libretti. On one's way through the book one learns without amazement that Gilbert admired the Book of Job, but not Jane Austen; that he built his libretti with architectural care; that he approved of the censorship of plays.