The Bab Ballads represent a significant collection of light verse penned by W. S. Gilbert, the renowned librettist who would later achieve fame through his collaborations with composer Arthur Sullivan. Illustrated with Gilbert's own comic drawings, these poems derive their name from his childhood nickname, "Bab," a moniker he later adopted to sign his illustrations. The ballads are notable for developing Gilbert's distinctive "topsy-turvy" style,
a comedic approach where humor springs from establishing a ridiculous premise and then meticulously exploring its absurd, yet logical, consequences. Beyond their unique structure, the Bab Ballads also showcase Gilbert's cynical and satirical take on humor, offering readers a glimpse into the mind of a writer who delighted in turning conventions on their head.
The Genesis of a Unique Collection
The origin of The Bab Ballads traces back to 1861, when the magazine *Fun* was launched under the editorship of H. J. Byron. Gilbert recounted how he submitted a three-quarter-column article accompanied by a half-page drawing. To his surprise, the printer of the paper, acting on Byron's behalf, requested that Gilbert contribute a column of "copy" and a half-page drawing every week. Gilbert initially felt he had exhausted his creative well with that first submission, believing he had poured all his knowledge into it. However, encouraged by the printer, he decided to try, discovering that he still had creative reserves. This led to him contributing hundreds of columns to the periodical throughout Byron's editorship and that of his successor, Tom Hood.
For a decade, Gilbert wrote articles and poems for *Fun*, also serving as its drama critic. While his very first column remains unidentifiable, his earliest known contribution is a drawing titled "Some mistake here" from October 26, 1861. Many of his early pieces for the journal were unsigned, making identification challenging. The poems Gilbert himself deemed worthy of inclusion in The Bab Ballads began appearing in 1865, with a more consistent output from 1866 to 1869. The series title, "Bab," is a diminutive of "baby" and may also have been a nod to Charles Dickens's pen name, "Boz." Gilbert didn't regularly sign his drawings "Bab" until 1866, and the poems weren't officially called "Bab Ballads" until the first collected edition was published in 1869. From that point on, his new poems in *Fun* were explicitly captioned "The Bab Ballads," and he even started numbering them, with "Mister William" (February 6, 1869) designated as No. 60.
Evolution and Publication History
By 1868, the popularity of Gilbert's poems was sufficient to warrant a collected edition. He carefully selected forty-four poems, thirty-four of which were illustrated, for *The "Bab" Ballads – Much Sound and Little Sense*. A second collection, *More "Bab" Ballads*, featuring thirty-five illustrated ballads, followed in 1872. In 1876, Gilbert compiled *Fifty "Bab" Ballads*, which included one poem, "Etiquette," for the first time, while omitting twenty-five poems from earlier volumes. Gilbert explained this curation, noting that many poems were written hastily under weekly deadlines, and he sought to remove those that showed "carelessness or undue haste" to present a more refined collection.
However, readers expressed dissatisfaction with the omitted poems. In response, Gilbert published all the poems that had appeared in either *The "Bab" Ballads* or *More "Bab" Ballads* in 1882, though "Etiquette" was again excluded. Some twentieth-century editions of *More "Bab" Ballads* did eventually include "Etiquette." Gilbert's output of Bab Ballads began to decrease significantly around 1870, coinciding with his growing success as a dramatist. The last poem he considered a Bab Ballad, "Old Paul and Old Tim," appeared in *Fun* in January 1871. In the subsequent four decades of his life, Gilbert contributed only a handful of verses to periodicals, though some posthumous editions have included these later works, despite Gilbert not having done so himself.
The Enduring Legacy and Attribution Challenges
In 1890, Gilbert produced *Songs of a Savoyard*, a volume containing sixty-nine detached lyrics from the Savoy Operas, each given a new title and sometimes slightly reworded. Many of these also received "Bab" illustrations, creating the impression of a new volume of ballads; Gilbert even considered naming it *The Savoy Ballads*. The definitive collection arrived in 1898 with *The Bab Ballads, with which are included Songs of a Savoyard*. This comprehensive volume featured all previously collected Bab Ballads, the sixty-nine "Songs of a Savoyard," and eighteen additional lyrics from his later operas. The ballads and illustrated opera lyrics were interleaved, creating a unified body of work. Gilbert also added over two hundred new drawings, illustrating previously unillustrated ballads and replacing most of the older ones, aiming to correct what he felt was "unnecessary extravagance" in the original illustrations.
This 1898 edition remained almost continuously in print until its copyright expired in 1961. The identification of what constitutes a "Bab Ballad" is not universally agreed upon. While it clearly includes poems Gilbert published under that title, many others he contributed to periodicals were not included in his collected editions. Most scholars accept as Bab Ballads any poems Gilbert contributed to periodicals, excluding those written or repurposed as operatic lyrics. After Gilbert's death, efforts were made to identify missing ballads, with various editions by Dark & Gray (1923), Goldberg (1929), and Searle (1932) publishing additional works, though not all have been universally accepted into the canon. A 1970 edition by James Ellis attempted to consolidate these, including poems Gilbert acknowledged, those deemed authentic by earlier compilers, and others identified by Ellis himself, sometimes based on stylistic grounds or the presence of a "Bab" illustration. However, some attributions remain provisional, as Gilbert occasionally illustrated works by other writers.
