Full Description
'"What?" said the reverend gent,
"Dance through my hours of leisure?
Smoke? Bathe myself with scent?
Play croquet? Oh, with pleasure!"'
Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, but another of his great - and numerous - literary contributions were his humorous ballads, written and illustrated under the pseudonym 'Bab'.
Combining his trademark absurdist wit with keenly observed character studies, the ballads are a satirical tour de force that lambast society figures. This new selection, chosen and introduced by Andrew Crowther, Secretary of the W.S. Gilbert Society, brings together the very best of the ballads and presents the 'Bab' works for a new readership.
Contents
'W.S. Gilbert: A Brief Introduction', 'Introduction', 'Preface to The Bab Ballads (1869)', The Bab Ballads: 'Captain Reece', 'The Rival Curates', 'General John', 'Haunted', 'The Troubadour', 'Ferdinando and Elvira', 'Babette's Love', 'To My Bride', 'Sir Macklin', 'The Yarn of the Nancy Bell', 'The Bishop of Rum-Ti-Foo', 'The Precocious Baby', 'Thomas Winterbottom Hance', 'A Discontented Sugar Broker', 'The Ghost, the Gallant, the Gael and the Goblin', 'At a Pantomime', 'Thomson Green and Harriet Hale', 'The Story of Prince Agib', 'Ellen McJones Aberdeen', 'Peter the Wag', 'Joe Golightly', 'Gentle Alice Brown', 'Mister William', 'The Bumboat Woman's Story', 'Pasha Bailey Ben', 'Lieutenant-Colonel Flare', 'Lost Mr Blake', 'The Baby's Vengeance', 'Annie Protheroe', 'Gregory Parable, LL D', 'Brave Alum Bey', 'Sir Barnaby Bampton Boo', 'The Modest Couple', 'My Dream', 'The Haughty Actor', 'The Two Majors', 'Emily, John, James and I', 'The Perils of Invisibility', 'The Fairy Curate', 'The Way of Wooing', 'Etiquette', Notes, 'The Selected Ballads in Chronological Order'
