\"English Dramatist\" Douglas William Jerrold Signed 3X3 Page Mounted For Sale

Up for sale "English Dramatist" Douglas William Jerrold Signed 3X3 Page Mounted.

ES-8704

Douglas

William Jerrold (London

3 January 1803 – 8 June 1857 London) was an English dramatist and writer. Jerrold's

father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby

near Cranbrook in Kent. In 1807 Douglas 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;[3] 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.[2] Thus Jerrold became a professional journalist. 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 defence 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.