George H. Jessop

George Henry Jessop (1852 – 21 March 1915) was an Irish playwright, librettist, journalist, and novelist. Born in Ireland and educated at Trinity College Dublin, Jessop began his career as a writer working for magazines in London before moving to California in 1873. (According to Loeber, Loeber, & Mullin, sources that had previously claimed Jessop left Ireland for California in 1872 were not accurate.) He was the brother of the Irish writer Mary Kathleen Jessop and their parents were Frederick Thomas Jessop and Elizabeth Low. The work premiered in Detroit, Michigan in 1879 with a cast led by the actor J. B. Polk. His second play, All At Sea, premiered on June 3, 1881,

His third play, Sam'l of Posen; or, The Commercial Drummer, was his greatest achievement as a playwright and had a successful national tour that included a twelve-week long run on Broadway in 1881. It had a successful national tour which included two separate runs in New York City; first at the Grand Opera House and later at Broadway's Windsor Theater. Other stops on the tour included performances at the Park Theatre, Brooklyn, Grand Opera House, St. Louis, and the McVicker's Theater in Chicago among other venues. This was the first of several successful plays co-authored by Jessop and Gill.

Jessop's second collaboration with Gill was the play An Old Stager or, That Angel Mac which they co-authored for the husband and wife acting team William J. Florence and Malvina Pray Florence for performance at the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore in March 1883. They authored a second play for the pair, Facts, or His Little Hatchet, which was given its premiere at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia in September 1883. This second play was tremendously profitable and became the greatest success for the Florences in their acting careers; remaining in their regularly performed repertoire for the next six years including multiple runs at Broadway theatres.

Along with Fred Maeder and Clay Greene, Jessop was one of several writers who contributed to modifications made to Gill's hit musical My Sweetheart after it premiered in 1881. The work turned the actress Minnie Palmer into an international star; and had a lengthy run in London's West End in addition to spending years touring the United States, Europe, and Australia in the 1880s, 1890s, and the 1900s. Palmer was still appearing in the role as late as February 1907 at the Perth Theatre; more than 25 years after she originated the role of Tina.

The next collaboration between Jessop and Gill, their 1884 play Stolen Money, was their first critical failure. The work was a stage adaptation of Charles Reade's 1884 novel Single Heart and Double Face and was skewered in reviews from the New York press. They rebounded later that year with a popular if not critical success, writing the libretto for the musical A Bottle of Ink (1884 premiere in Boston; 1885, Comedy Theater, Broadway), which starred soprano Ida Mülle, the comic actor Jefferson De Angelis, and the actress Hattie Starr. This was followed soon after by the libretto for Mam’zelle, or the Little Milliner, which was written for and starred the French soprano Marie Aimée who was the leading star of French operetta on the American stage during the 19th century. This work premiered on 5 September 1884 in Kingston, New York and toured to Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, and Brooklyn before finally settling in for a successful run at Broadway's Fifth Avenue Theater. The work later became a successful vehicle for Jennie Kimball's opera company who toured widely in the work after purchasing the rights to the piece following Aimée's death in 1887. It was revived on Broadway in 1888 with Alice Harrison in the title part.

On 2 March 1885, Jessop and Gill's supposedly original play Muddles premiered at the Imperial Theatre in London in a production produced by and starring the actor Harry St. Maur who later performed the work again in a run at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Liverpool. In reality, the work contained a significant portion of material authored by Gill earlier for his 1884 musical flop Two Bad Men which he had created in collaboration with the composer Gustave Kerker for the American stage. Jessop was presumably brought in to assist in an attempted rescue of this failed work by altering it into a farce for the London stage in which it was retitled Muddles. The London press ridiculed the work, and Muddles was the first of a series of flops suffered by the Jessop and Gill creative partnership. These included two failures on the American stage: Bluff (1885) and Aphrodite Still in the Ring (1886); the final stage works co-authored by Jessop and Gill that were performed.

By 1887 Jessop and Gill's partnership had dissolved and the two men were no longer on good terms with one another. In April 1887 newspapers announced the future staging of a play in San Francisco that was credited to Jessop, The Noblest Roman of Them All. This announcement angered Gill who wrote a public letter denouncing Jessop for not including his name as one of the primary authors of the work. That play was never performed.

Novelist and playwright in New York City Following the collapse of his partnership with Gill, Jessop's output as a writer widened to include novels in addition to works written for the American theater. In both genres he sometimes worked with other writers. By himself he authored the plays Myles Aroon (1888) and Mavourneen (1891), and with Augustus Pitou he co-authored The Power of the Press (1892).

During his years as a rising playwright in the 1880s, Jessop had relocated from California to New York City where he contributed to several New York-based magazines; including Puck, Judge, and The Century Magazine. He authored two novels about Irish-American life, With Matthews he also co-authored the novel A Tale of Twenty-five Hours (1892).

Later life and career in Europe Jessop returned to Ireland sometime in the early 1890s. works which musical theatre historian Kurt Gänzl stated "were perhaps his two best pieces for the musical stage". published as a book in 1914)

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