Douglas William Jerrold
Encyclopedia
Douglas William Jerrold (3 January 1803 – 8 June 1857) was an English
dramatist and writer.
. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook
in Kent
. In 1807 Douglass moved to Sheerness
, where he spent his childhood. He occasionally took a child part on the stage, but his father's profession held little attraction for him. In December 1813 he joined the guardship Namur
, where he had Jane Austen
's brother Francis
as captain, and served as a midshipman
until the peace of 1815. He saw nothing of the war save a number of wounded soldiers from Waterloo
, but he retained an affection for the sea.
The peace of 1815 ruined Jerrold's father; on 1 January 1816 he took his family to London, where Douglas began work as a printer's apprentice, and in 1819 he became a compositor in the printing-office of the Sunday Monitor. Several short papers and copies of verses by him had already appeared in the sixpenny magazines, and a criticism of the opera Der Freischütz
was admired by the editor, who requested further contributions. Thus Jerrold became a professional journalist
.
In 1821, a comedy
that Jerrold had written at the age of fourteen was brought out at Sadler's Wells theatre under the title More Frightened than Hurt. Other plays followed, and in 1825 he was employed for a few pounds weekly to produce drama
s and farce
s to order for Davidge of the Coburg theatre. In the autumn of 1824, the "little Shakespeare in a camlet
cloak", as he was nicknamed, married Mary Swan and continued to work as both dramatist and journalist. For a short while he was part proprietor of a small Sunday newspaper. In 1822, through a quarrel with the exacting Davidge, Jerrold left for Coburg
.
In 1829, a three-act melodrama
about corrupt personnel and press gangs of the Navy launched his fame. Black-Eyed Susan
; or, All in the Downs, was brought out by manager Robert William Elliston
at the Surrey Theatre
. Britain at the time was recovering from the fallout of the Napoleonic Wars
, and was in the midst of a class war involving the Corn laws
, and a reform movement, which resulted in the Reform Act of 1832
aimed at reducing corruption. Black-Eyed Susan consisted of various extreme stereotypes representing the forces of good, evil, the innocent and the corrupt, the poor and the rich, woven into a serious plot with comic sub-plots to keep the audience entertained. Its subject was very topical and its success was enormous. It took the town by storm, and all London crossed the river to see it. Elliston made a fortune from the piece; TP Cooke, who played William, made his reputation; Jerrold received about £60 and was engaged as dramatic author at five pounds a week, but his reputation as a dramatist was established.
It was proposed in 1830 that he should adapt something from the French language
for Drury Lane
. He declined, preferring to produce original work. The Bride of Ludgate (8 December 1832) was the first of a number of his plays produced at Drury Lane. The other patent houses also threw their doors open to him (the Adelphi
had already done so); and in 1836 Jerrold became the manager of the Strand Theatre
with WJ Hammond, his brother-in-law. The venture was not successful, and the partnership was dissolved. While it lasted, Jerrold wrote his only tragedy
, The Painter of Ghent, and himself appeared in the title role, without much success.
He continued to write sparkling comedies until 1854, the date of his last piece, The Heart of Gold. Meanwhile he was writing for numerous periodicals, and gradually became a contributor to the Monthly Magazine, Blackwood's
, the New Monthly, and the Athenaeum
. To Punch, the publication which of all others is associated with his name, he contributed from its second number in 1841 until within a few days of his death. Punch was a humorous and liberal publication. Jerrold's liberal and radical perspective was portrayed in the magazine under the pseudonym 'Q', which used satire to attack institutions of the day. Punch was also the forum in which he published in the 1840s his comic series Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was later published in book form.
He founded and edited for some time, with indifferent success, the Illuminated Magazine, Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, and Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper; and under his editorship Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper
rose from almost nonentity to a circulation of 582,000. The history of his later years is little more than a catalogue of his literary productions, interrupted now and again by brief visits to the Continent or to the country. Douglas Jerrold died at his house, Kilburn Priory, in London on the 8 June 1857. Later that month Charles Dickens gave a public reading to raise money for his widow.
Jerrold's figure was small and spare, and in later years bowed almost to deformity. His features were strongly marked and expressive, from the thin humorous lips to the keen blue eyes, gleaming from beneath the shaggy eyebrows. He was brisk and active, with the careless bluffness of a sailor. Open and sincere, he concealed neither his anger nor his pleasure; to his sailor's frankness all polite duplicity was distasteful. The cynical side of his nature he kept for his writings; in private life his hand was always open. In politics Jerrold was a Liberal
, and he gave eager sympathy to Lajos Kossuth
, Giuseppe Mazzini
and Louis Blanc
. In social politics especially he took an eager part; he never tired of declaiming against the horrors of war, the luxury of bishops, or the iniquity of capital punishment
.
Douglas Jerrold is now perhaps better known from his reputation as a brilliant wit in conversation than from his writings. As a dramatist he was very popular, though his plays have not kept the stage. He dealt with rather humbler forms of social world than had commonly been represented on the boards. He was one of the first and certainly one of the most successful of the men who in defense of the native English drama endeavoured to stem the tide of translation from the French, which threatened early in the 19th century to drown original native talent. His skill in construction and his mastery of epigram and brilliant dialogue are well exemplified in his comedy, Time Works Wonders (Haymarket, 26 April 1845). The tales and sketches which form the bulk of Jerrold's collected works vary much in skill and interest; but, although there are evident traces of their having been composed from week to week, they are always marked by keen satirical observation and pungent wit.
See his eldest son William Blanchard Jerrold
's Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold (1859). A collected edition of his writings appeared between 1851–54, and The Works of Douglas Jerrold, with a memoir by his son, W. B. Jerrold, in 1863–64, but neither is complete. The first article of the first issue of the Atlantic Monthly (November 1857) is a lengthy obituary for Jerrold. Among the numerous selections from his tales and witticisms are two edited by his grandson, Walter Jerrold
, Bons Mots of Charles Dickens
and Douglas Jerrold (new ed. 1904), and The Essays of Douglas Jerrold (1903), illustrated by H. M. Brock
. See also The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold (1858), edited by WB Jerrold.
Douglas Jerrold was the great-grandfather of Audrey Mayhew Allen (b. 1870), author of a number of children's stories published in various periodicals, and of a book Gladys in Grammarland
, an imitation of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
dramatist and writer.
Biography
Jerrold was born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook
Cranbrook, Kent
Cranbrook is a small town in Kent in South East England which was granted a charter in 1290 by Archbishop Peckham, allowing it to hold a market in the High Street. Located on the Maidstone to Hastings road, it is five miles north of Hawkhurst. The smaller settlements of Swattenden, Colliers...
in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. In 1807 Douglass moved to Sheerness
Sheerness
Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 12,000 it is the largest town on the island....
, where he spent his childhood. He occasionally took a child part on the stage, but his father's profession held little attraction for him. In December 1813 he joined the guardship Namur
HMS Namur (1756)
HMS Namur was a 90-gun second rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Chatham Dockyard to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment as amended in 1750, and launched on 3 March 1756....
, where he had Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
's brother Francis
Francis Austen
Sir Francis William Austen, GCB was a British officer who spent most of his long life on active duty in the Royal Navy, rising to the position of Admiral of the Fleet.-Background:...
as captain, and served as a midshipman
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
until the peace of 1815. He saw nothing of the war save a number of wounded soldiers from Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, but he retained an affection for the sea.
The peace of 1815 ruined Jerrold's father; on 1 January 1816 he took his family to London, where Douglas began work as a printer's apprentice, and in 1819 he became a compositor in the printing-office of the Sunday Monitor. Several short papers and copies of verses by him had already appeared in the sixpenny magazines, and a criticism of the opera Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
was admired by the editor, who requested further contributions. Thus Jerrold became a professional journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
.
In 1821, a comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
that Jerrold had written at the age of fourteen was brought out at Sadler's Wells theatre under the title More Frightened than Hurt. Other plays followed, and in 1825 he was employed for a few pounds weekly to produce drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s and farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
s to order for Davidge of the Coburg theatre. In the autumn of 1824, the "little Shakespeare in a camlet
Camlet
Camlet, also commonly known as camelot or camblet, is a woven fabric that might have originally been made of camel or goat's hair, now chiefly of goat's hair and silk, or of wool and cotton...
cloak", as he was nicknamed, married Mary Swan and continued to work as both dramatist and journalist. For a short while he was part proprietor of a small Sunday newspaper. In 1822, through a quarrel with the exacting Davidge, Jerrold left for Coburg
Coburg
Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...
.
In 1829, a three-act melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
about corrupt personnel and press gangs of the Navy launched his fame. Black-Eyed Susan
Black-Eyed Susan
Black-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs is a comic play in three acts by Douglas Jerrold. The story concerns a sailor, William, who returns to England from the Napoleonic Wars and finds that his wife Susan is being harassed by her crooked landlord uncle and later by his drunken, dastardly captain,...
; or, All in the Downs, was brought out by manager Robert William Elliston
Robert William Elliston
Robert William Elliston was an English actor and theatre manager.He was born in London, the son of a watchmaker. He was educated at St Paul's School, but ran away from home and made his first appearance on the stage as Tressel in Richard III at Bath in 1791...
at the Surrey Theatre
Surrey Theatre
The Surrey Theatre began life in 1782 as the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy, one of the many circuses that provided contemporary London entertainment of both horsemanship and drama...
. Britain at the time was recovering from the fallout of the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, and was in the midst of a class war involving the Corn laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
, and a reform movement, which resulted in the Reform Act of 1832
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
aimed at reducing corruption. Black-Eyed Susan consisted of various extreme stereotypes representing the forces of good, evil, the innocent and the corrupt, the poor and the rich, woven into a serious plot with comic sub-plots to keep the audience entertained. Its subject was very topical and its success was enormous. It took the town by storm, and all London crossed the river to see it. Elliston made a fortune from the piece; TP Cooke, who played William, made his reputation; Jerrold received about £60 and was engaged as dramatic author at five pounds a week, but his reputation as a dramatist was established.
It was proposed in 1830 that he should adapt something from the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
for Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
. He declined, preferring to produce original work. The Bride of Ludgate (8 December 1832) was the first of a number of his plays produced at Drury Lane. The other patent houses also threw their doors open to him (the Adelphi
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
had already done so); and in 1836 Jerrold became the manager of the Strand Theatre
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps...
with WJ Hammond, his brother-in-law. The venture was not successful, and the partnership was dissolved. While it lasted, Jerrold wrote his only tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
, The Painter of Ghent, and himself appeared in the title role, without much success.
He continued to write sparkling comedies until 1854, the date of his last piece, The Heart of Gold. Meanwhile he was writing for numerous periodicals, and gradually became a contributor to the Monthly Magazine, Blackwood's
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
, the New Monthly, and the Athenaeum
Athenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
. To Punch, the publication which of all others is associated with his name, he contributed from its second number in 1841 until within a few days of his death. Punch was a humorous and liberal publication. Jerrold's liberal and radical perspective was portrayed in the magazine under the pseudonym 'Q', which used satire to attack institutions of the day. Punch was also the forum in which he published in the 1840s his comic series Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was later published in book form.
He founded and edited for some time, with indifferent success, the Illuminated Magazine, Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, and Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper; and under his editorship Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper
-Founding:The paper was launched by Edward Lloyd in 1842 as Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, following the success of his Lloyd's Penny Weekly Miscellany. The new paper was intended as a rival for the Illustrated London News...
rose from almost nonentity to a circulation of 582,000. The history of his later years is little more than a catalogue of his literary productions, interrupted now and again by brief visits to the Continent or to the country. Douglas Jerrold died at his house, Kilburn Priory, in London on the 8 June 1857. Later that month Charles Dickens gave a public reading to raise money for his widow.
Jerrold's figure was small and spare, and in later years bowed almost to deformity. His features were strongly marked and expressive, from the thin humorous lips to the keen blue eyes, gleaming from beneath the shaggy eyebrows. He was brisk and active, with the careless bluffness of a sailor. Open and sincere, he concealed neither his anger nor his pleasure; to his sailor's frankness all polite duplicity was distasteful. The cynical side of his nature he kept for his writings; in private life his hand was always open. In politics Jerrold was a Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
, and he gave eager sympathy to Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...
, Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
and Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....
. In social politics especially he took an eager part; he never tired of declaiming against the horrors of war, the luxury of bishops, or the iniquity of capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
.
Douglas Jerrold is now perhaps better known from his reputation as a brilliant wit in conversation than from his writings. As a dramatist he was very popular, though his plays have not kept the stage. He dealt with rather humbler forms of social world than had commonly been represented on the boards. He was one of the first and certainly one of the most successful of the men who in defense of the native English drama endeavoured to stem the tide of translation from the French, which threatened early in the 19th century to drown original native talent. His skill in construction and his mastery of epigram and brilliant dialogue are well exemplified in his comedy, Time Works Wonders (Haymarket, 26 April 1845). The tales and sketches which form the bulk of Jerrold's collected works vary much in skill and interest; but, although there are evident traces of their having been composed from week to week, they are always marked by keen satirical observation and pungent wit.
Works
Among the best known of his numerous works are:- Black-Eyed SusanBlack-Eyed SusanBlack-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs is a comic play in three acts by Douglas Jerrold. The story concerns a sailor, William, who returns to England from the Napoleonic Wars and finds that his wife Susan is being harassed by her crooked landlord uncle and later by his drunken, dastardly captain,...
(1829) play / melodrama - The Rent Day (1832) play / melodrama
- Men of Character (1838), including "Job Pippin: The man who couldn't help it," and other sketches of the same kind
- Cakes and Ale (2 vols., 1842), a collection of short papers and whimsical stories
- The Story of a Feather (1844) novel
- The Chronicles of Clovernook (1846) novel
- A Man made of Money (1849) novel
- St Giles and St James (1851) novel
- various series of papers reprinted from Punch's Letters to his Son (1843)
- Punch's Complete Letter-writer (1845)
- the famous Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures (1846).
See his eldest son William Blanchard Jerrold
William Blanchard Jerrold
William Blanchard Jerrold , was an English journalist and author.-Biography:He was born in London, the eldest son of the dramatist, Douglas William Jerrold. Due to his disagreements with the practices at the elite Mao school, where he was educated for two and a half years, he quit school and began...
's Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold (1859). A collected edition of his writings appeared between 1851–54, and The Works of Douglas Jerrold, with a memoir by his son, W. B. Jerrold, in 1863–64, but neither is complete. The first article of the first issue of the Atlantic Monthly (November 1857) is a lengthy obituary for Jerrold. Among the numerous selections from his tales and witticisms are two edited by his grandson, Walter Jerrold
Walter Jerrold
Walter Copeland Jerrold was an English writer, biographer and newspaper editor.-Life and work:Jerrold was born in Liverpool, the son of Thomas Jerrold and Jane Copeland , and one of 11 children...
, Bons Mots of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
and Douglas Jerrold (new ed. 1904), and The Essays of Douglas Jerrold (1903), illustrated by H. M. Brock
H. M. Brock
Henry Matthew Brock was a British illustrator and landscape painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.Born in Cambridge in England, H. M...
. See also The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold (1858), edited by WB Jerrold.
Douglas Jerrold was the great-grandfather of Audrey Mayhew Allen (b. 1870), author of a number of children's stories published in various periodicals, and of a book Gladys in Grammarland
Gladys in Grammarland
Gladys in Grammarland is a novel by Audrey Mayhew Allen, written ca. 1897 and published by the Roxburghe Press of Westminster. It is an educational imitation of Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland....
, an imitation of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books.
See also
- William Blanchard JerroldWilliam Blanchard JerroldWilliam Blanchard Jerrold , was an English journalist and author.-Biography:He was born in London, the eldest son of the dramatist, Douglas William Jerrold. Due to his disagreements with the practices at the elite Mao school, where he was educated for two and a half years, he quit school and began...
(son) Journalist and author. - Walter JerroldWalter JerroldWalter Copeland Jerrold was an English writer, biographer and newspaper editor.-Life and work:Jerrold was born in Liverpool, the son of Thomas Jerrold and Jane Copeland , and one of 11 children...
(Grandson) Journalist and author.
Further reading
- Richard Kelly. The Best of Mr. Punch: the Humorous Writings of Douglas Jerrold. University of Tennessee Press, 1970.
- Richard Kelly. Douglas Jerrold. Twayne, 1972.
- Michael Slater. Douglas Jerrold: A Life (1803–1857). Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd, 2003.