Gilbert, Sir William Schwenck

(1836-1911)

   Born in London, the son of the novelist William Gilbert, he was educated at King's College, London, and graduated from London University in 1857. His name has become immortalized as the librettist of the duo Gilbert and Sullivan, a collaboration that began in 1875; together they wrote fourteen highly popular operettas. He also wrote scores of stage pieces, reviews, short stories, and a great many short poems. He built and owned the Garrick Theatre in Charing Cross Road, London, opened in 1889. When Sir Arthur Sullivan (knighted 1883) died in 1900, Gilbert wrote, "A Gilbert is no good without a Sullivan, and I can't find one." He was knighted in 1907 and died of heart failure as a result of trying to save a young woman from drowning. His ashes were buried at Great Stanmore Church, Middlesex. Some of his poems: "Annie Protheroe: A Legend of Stratford-Le-Bow," "Captain Reece," "Ellen M'Jones Aberdeen," "Gentle Alice Brown," "The Baffled Grumbler," "The British Tar," "The Duke and the Duchess," "The Fable of the Magnet and the Churn," "To a Little Maid-By a Policeman."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Innocent Merriment: An Anthology of Light Verse. Franklin P. Adams, ed. McGraw-Hill, 1942. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www. npg.org.uk). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 5th ed. Vol. 2, M.H. Abrams, ed. W.W. Norton, 1986. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2, M.H. Abrams, ed. W.W. Norton, 1993. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.