Albery, James, 1838-1889

Albery was born in London, May 4, 1838; dramatist; farce, A Pretty Piece of Chiselling, was given its first production by the Ingoldsby Club in 1864; Dr Davy was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London (1866); most successful piece, Two Roses, a comedy, was produced at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1870, in which Sir Henry Irving made one of his earliest London successes as Digby Grant, The production ran for 300 performances; author of a large number of other plays and adaptations, including Coquettes (1870), Pickwick (based on Dickens's The Pickwick Papers (1871), Pink Dominos (1877) a farce that ran for an extremely successful 555 performances and was one of a series of adaptations from the French which he made for the Criterion Theatre, Jingle (a farcical version of Pickwick), produced at the Lyceum in 1878; and Oriana (with music by Frederic Clay); one-act operetta, The Spectre Knight, with music by Alfred Cellier, ran as a companion piece to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer and then H.M.S. Pinafore at the Opera Comique in 1878 and on tour; farce Brighton (1888) among other later plays; wrote a book called Where's the Cat?, 1880; married acctress Mary Moore and had a son, Bronson Albery (1881-1971) a theatre director; died Aug. 15, 1889