Douglas William Jerrold writes for R.W. Elliston…

Douglas William Jerrold writes for R.W. Elliston of the Surrey Theatre his spectacular Black-Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs, a three-act melodrama about corrupt personnel and press gangs of the Navy that launches his fame.

Britain is recovering from the fallout of the Napoleonic Wars and is in the middle of a class war involving the Corn laws, and a reform movement, which will result in the Reform Act of 1832 aimed at reducing corruption.

Black-eyed Susan consists 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 subplots to keep the audience entertained.

Its subject is very topical; its success, enormous.

It takes the town by storm, and all London crosses the river to see it.

Elliston makes a fortune from the piece; T. P. Cooke, who played William, makes his reputation; Jerrold receives about sixty pounds and is engaged as dramatic author at five pounds a week, but his reputation as a dramatist is established.

Jerrold was born in London; his father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theater of Wilsby near Cranbrook in Kent.

Douglas had moved In 1807 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 had 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 had ruined Jerrold's father; on January 1, 1816, he had taken 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 dramas and farces to order for Davidge of the Coburg theater.

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, but In 1822, through a quarrel with the exacting Davidge, Jerrold left for Coburg.

Jerrold is now perhaps better known from his reputation as a brilliant wit in conversation than from his writings.

As a dramatist he is very popular, though his plays will not keept the stage.