Henry James Byron

Henry James Byron (8 January 1835 – 11 April 1884) was a prolific English dramatist, as well as an editor, journalist, director, theatre manager, novelist and actor.

After an abortive start at a medical career, Byron struggled as a provincial actor and aspiring playwright in the 1850s. Returning to London and beginning to study for the Bar, he finally found playwriting success in burlesques and other punny plays. In the 1860s, he became an editor of humorous magazines and a noted man-about-town, while continuing to build his playwriting reputation, notably as co-manager, with Marie Wilton, of the Prince of Wales's Theatre. In 1869, he returned to the stage as an actor and, during the same period, wrote numerous successful plays, including the historic international success, Our Boys. In his last years, he grew frail from tuberculosis and died at the age of 49.

Byron was born in Manchester, England, the son of Henry Byron (1804–1884, second cousin to the poet Lord Byron and descendant of many Lord Byrons), at one time British consul in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Elizabeth Josephine née Bradley. He was educated in Essex and then at St. Peter's Collegiate School in Eaton Square, London. Although his mother wanted him to pursue a career in the Navy, Byron did not do so. Instead, he first became a physician's clerk in London for four years and then studied medicine with his grandfather, Dr. James Byron Bradley, in Buxton. Byron married Martha Foulkes (1831–1876) in London in 1856. He entered the Middle Temple as a student briefly in 1858, but he had already begun writing for the stage and soon returned to that vocation.

Byron joined several provincial companies as an actor from 1853–57, sometimes in his own plays and sometimes in those of T. W. Robertson (with whom he acted and starved) or others, but had little success. He described his early attempts at acting, and the hardships of the journeyman touring actor, in an 1873 essay for The Era Almanack and Annual called "Eighteen Parts a Week". He began writing burlesques of melodramas and extravaganzas in the mid-1850s. In 1857, his burlesque of Richard of the Lion Heart premièred at the Royal Strand Theatre. His successful works in 1858 included The Lady of Lyons, or, Twopenny Pride and Pennytence and Fra Diavolo Travestie; or, The Prince, the Pirate and the Pearl, also at the Strand, which later played in New York. This was so well received that Byron abandoned the law to concentrate full-time on theatre. Another successful Strand burlesque in 1858 was The Maid and the Magpie; or, The Fatal Spoon an early play to include a dance at the end of a song. This starred Marie Wilton as Pippo and was also revived in New York. In 1859, he wrote another successful burlesque, The Babes in the Wood and the Good Little Fairy Birds. He soon wrote other burlesques for the Strand, the Olympic Theatre, and the Adelphi Theatre, as well as a sequence of Christmas pantomimes for the Princess's Theatre, beginning in 1859 with Jack the Giant Killer, or, Harlequin, King Arthur, and ye Knights of ye Round Table and followed the next year by Robinson Crusoe, or Harlequin Friday and the King of the Caribee Islands!

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