Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales is an 1890 book by W. S. Gilbert, collecting several of the short stories and essays he wrote in his early career as a magazine writer. Copyright problems dogged it, and it was pulled from market shortly after its publication. Nonetheless, as few of his stories have been reprinted, and as some of them were used as source material for later plays, it remains popular with those that can get a copy of it. 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar). ... Sir William Schwenck Gilbert Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (November 18, 1836 – May 29, 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist and illustrator best known for the fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. ...

Contents

Foggerty's Fairy - A series of alternate histories of a somewhat roguish fellow, Freddy Foggerty, who is attempting to escape the consequences of having deserted the army some years previously, after meeting up with his former sergeant, with the help of the titular fairy who allows him to undo events in his past. Unfortunately, though in the main timeline he has overcome his chequered past and become a respectable shop owner, in the alternate histories, he turns out to have become a slave ship captain, a banker about to be arrested for fraud, and so on. Eventually, he returns to the original timeline, and it turns out the sergeant hadn't recognised him, and everything ends happily.

An Elixir of Love - The basis for The Sorcerer, and roughly similar in plot - except, of course, for the status quo not being restored at the end, but Jenny (Aline in the opera), going off with the equivilent of Dr. Daly, and Stanley (Alexis), having to live alone. Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Sorcerer The Sorcerer is the earliest surviving two-act Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. ...

Johnny Pounce

Little Mim

The Triumph of Vice

My Maiden Brief

Creatures of Impulse

Maxwell and I

Actors, Authors, and Audiences

Angela

Wide Awake

A Stage Play

The Wicked World

The Finger of Fate

A Tale of a Dry Plate

The Burglar's Story

Unappreciated Shakespeare (From the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Christmas Number, 1882)^[1]

Comedy and Tragedy

Rosencratz and Guildenstern

Cultural Impact

Besides containing the original sources for the plays Foggerty's Fairy, Creatures of Impulse, Tom Cobb (Wide Awake), The Wicked World, Comedy and Tragedy, and Rosencratz and Guildenstern, and the operas The Sorcerer (An Elixir of Love), and Fallen Fairies (The Wicked World again), some of the stories also served as the basis for a BBC Radio 4 series, "Gilbert without Sullivan". The essay "A Stage Play" is popular among biographers of Gilbert, as it sets out his directoral style in detail. Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Sorcerer The Sorcerer is the earliest surviving two-act Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. ... Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World, is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. ...

Peter Haining reprinted some of Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales in "The Lost Stories of W. S. Gilbert".

Notes

1. ^ Stedman, Jane W., W. S. Gilbert's Theatrical Criticism, page 5.

References

• Gilbert, W. S. (1890). Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales. London: George Routledge and Sons.

See also

• Gilbert, W. S. (1985). Peter Haining, ed. The Lost Stories of W.S. Gilbert. London(?): Robson Books. ISBN (US) 0-88186-735-X / (Britain) 0-86051-337-8.

External links

• An earlier version of A Stage Play may be read at The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive.