
The Bab Ballads
'The Bab Ballads' Summary
Gilbert himself explained how The Bab Ballads came about:
In 1861 the magazine Fun was started under the editorship of Mr. H. J. Byron. With much labour I turned out an article three-quarters of a column long, and sent it to the editor, together with a half-page drawing on wood. A day or two later the printer of the paper called upon me, with Mr Byron's compliments, and staggered me with a request to contribute a column of "copy" and a half-page drawing every week for the term of my natural life. I hardly knew how to treat the offer, for it seemed to me that into that short article I had poured all I knew. I was empty. I had exhausted myself: I didn't know any more. However, the printer encouraged me (with Mr. Byron's compliments), and I said I would try. I did try, and I found to my surprise that there was a little left, and enough indeed to enable me to contribute some hundreds of columns to the periodical throughout his editorship, and that of his successor, poor Tom Hood! (Gilbert 1883).
For ten years Gilbert wrote articles and poems for Fun, of which he was also the drama critic. Gilbert's first column "cannot now be identified" (Stedman 1996, p. 11). The first known contribution is a drawing titled "Some mistake here" on page 56 of the issue for 26 October 1861 (Plumb 2004, p. 499). Some of Gilbert's early work for the journal remains unidentified because many pieces were unsigned. The earliest pieces that Gilbert himself considered worthy to be collected in The Bab Ballads started to appear in 1865, and then much more steadily from 1866 to 1869.
The series takes its title from the nickname "Bab", which is short for "baby". It may also be a homage to Charles Dickens's pen name "Boz". Gilbert did not start signing his drawings "Bab" regularly until 1866, and he did not start calling the poems The Bab Ballads until the first collected edition was published in 1869. From then on his new poems in Fun were captioned "The Bab Ballads".
Gilbert also started numbering the poems, with "Mister William" (published 6 February 1869) as No. 60. However, it is not certain which poems Gilbert considered to be Nos. 1–59. Ellis counts backwards, including only those poems with drawings, and finds that the first "Bab Ballad" was "The Story of Gentle Archibald" (Ellis 1970, p. 13). However, Gilbert did not include "Gentle Archibald" in his collected editions, while he did include several poems published earlier than that. Nor did Gilbert limit the collected editions to poems with illustrations.
By 1870 Gilbert's output of "Bab Ballads" had started to tail off considerably, corresponding to his rising success as a dramatist. The last poem that Gilbert himself considered to be a "Bab Ballad", "Old Paul and Old Tim," appeared in Fun in January 1871. In the remaining forty years of his life Gilbert made only a handful of verse contributions to periodicals. Some posthumous editions of The Bab Ballads have included these later poems, although Gilbert did not.
Book Details
Authors

W. S. Gilbert
England
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most f...
Books by W. S. GilbertDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
Related books

Balade si Idile by George Coșbuc
**Balade și Idile** by George Coșbuc is a collection of poems that celebrates the beauty of the Romanian countryside and its people. Coșbuc's poems ar...

Right Off The Bat by William F. Kirk
'Right Off The Bat' by William F. Kirk is a collection of baseball ballads that capture the spirit and essence of the sport. The ballads cover all asp...

Songs of the Outlands: Ballads of the Hoboes and Other Verse by Henry Herbert Knibbs
This collection of poems by Henry Herbert Knibbs captures the lives and experiences of hobos and other outcasts during the early 20th century. Through...

The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses by Gilbert K. Chesterton
This book of poetry by G. K. Chesterton, originally published in 1922, contain 35 poems on a variety of subjects.

Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) was an English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868,...

To Jenny Lind by Anonymous
This poem, 'To Jenny Lind', is a tribute to the renowned Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind, penned by an anonymous author and published in the collecti...

Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon
This volume of poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon, a British-born Australian steeplechase rider, captures the spirit of the Australian bush and its inhabita...

Stories from the Ballads, Told to the Children by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
This book, intended for young readers, presents a collection of stories adapted from traditional ballads. It explores themes of medieval folklore, rom...

Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England by Various
This anthology gathers a collection of traditional English poems, ballads, and songs, showcasing the oral poetry and music passed down through generat...

Ballads and Poems by Dora Sigerson Shorter
This collection of poems and ballads by Dora Sigerson Shorter explores a range of themes, often drawing on Irish folklore and mythology. The poems evo...
Reviews for The Bab Ballads
No reviews posted or approved, yet...