Shirley Brooks

Artist Info

Shirley BrooksLondon, 1816 - 1874

LC name authority rec. n 80139859

LC Heading: Brooks, Shirley, 1816-1874

Biography:

Brooks, Charles William Shirley (1816–1874), journalist and playwright, was the son of William Brooks, architect, who died on 11 December 1867, aged eighty, and his wife, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of William Sabine of Islington. He was born at 52 Doughty Street, London, on 29 April 1816; after his early education he was articled, on 24 April 1832, to his uncle, Charles Sabine of Oswestry. He passed the Incorporated Law Society's examination in November 1838, but there is no record of his ever having become a solicitor. From 1848 to 1852 he was parliamentary correspondent for the Morning Chronicle. In 1853 the newspaper delegated him to inquire into the questions connected with the subject of labour and the poor in Russia, Syria, and Egypt. His pleasant letters from these countries were afterwards collected and published as Russians of the South (1854).

At the start of his writing career, from 1842, Brooks signed his articles for Ainsworth's Magazine Charles W. Brooks. His second literary signature was C. Shirley Brooks, and finally he became Shirley Brooks. This early journalism brought him into communication with Harrison Ainsworth, Laman Blanchard, and other well-known men, and he soon became the centre of a group of literary friends, who found pleasure in his wit and social qualities. As a dramatist he frequently achieved considerable success, without, however, once making any ambitious effort—such as, for example, producing a five-act comedy. His first play, The Creole, or, Love's Fetters, was produced at the Lyceum on 8 April 1847 to marked applause. A lighter piece, Anything for a Change, was staged at the same house on 7 June 1848. Two years later, on 5 August 1850, his two-act drama, Daughter of the Stars, was acted at the New Strand Theatre. The Great Exhibition of 1851 occasioned The exposition: a Scandinavian sketch, containing as much irrelevant matter as possible in one act, which was produced at the Strand on 28 April in that year. In association with John Oxenford, he supplied to the Olympic, for performance on 26 December 1861, an extravaganza, Timour the Tartar, or, The Iron Master of Samarkand. Among his other dramatic pieces may be mentioned The Guardian Angel, a farce, The Lowther Arcade, Honours and Tricks, and Our New Governess.

In his earlier days Brooks was a contributor to many of the best periodicals. He was a leader writer on the Illustrated London News, for which at a later period he wrote a weekly article entitled ‘Nothing in the Papers’. He conducted the Literary Gazette (1858–9), and edited Home News after the death of Robert Bell in 1867. He supplied three sketches—‘The Opera’, ‘The Coulisse’, and ‘The Foreign Gentleman’—to a volume edited by Albert Smith, Gavarni in London (1849); and in collaboration with Angus B. Reach he published A Story with a Vengeance (1852). At thirty-eight years of age he began to assert his claim to consideration as a popular novelist by writing Aspen Court: a Story of our Own Time; despite its success he allowed five years to pass before he published his second novel, the Gordian Knot, illustrated by J. Tenniel. He published several more novels, including Sooner or Later, illustrated by G. Du Maurier (3 vols., 1866–8).

The most important and interesting event in Brooks's life was his connection with Punch, which began in 1851 and lasted until his death. He signed his articles ‘Epicurus Rotundus’. In 1870 he succeeded Mark Lemon as editor. One of his best-known series of articles was ‘The essence of parliament’, a style of writing for which he was peculiarly fitted by his previous training with the Morning Chronicle, and which created a new genre of witty parliamentary commentary, maintained after Brooks by H. W. Lucy. Brooks had been innovative as a contributor in the 1860s, but he was a ‘steady-as-she-goes’ editor, and left the journal much as he found it.

Brooks was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 14 March 1872. He was always a hard worker, and the four years during which he was editor of Punch were no exception to the rule. Death found him in the midst of his books and papers, working cheerfully among his family. Two articles, ‘Election epigrams’ and ‘The situation’, were written on his deathbed, and published posthumously. He died at 6 Kent Terrace, Regent's Park, London, on 23 February 1874, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery on 28 February. His widow, Emily Margaret, daughter of Dr William Walkinshaw of Naparima, Trinidad, was granted a civil-list pension of £100 on 19 June 1876, and died on 14 May 1880.

G. C. Boase, rev. H. C. G. Matthew

Sources G. S. Layard, A great Punch editor (1907) · B. Jerrold, ‘Shirley Brooks’, GM, 5th ser., 12 (1874), 561–9 · R. G. G. Price, A history of Punch (1957) · DNB

Archives Harvard U., Houghton L., diaries · Hunt. L., corresp. · LUL :: Bodl. Oxf., letters to Messrs Bradbury and Evans · U. Leeds, Brotherton L., letters to George Augustus Sala · V&A NAL, letters to W. P. Frith and Mrs Frith

Likenesses Elliott & Fry, carte-de-visite, NPG · Elliott & Fry, photograph, repro. in ILN (7 March 1874), 225 · H. N. King of Bath, carte-de-visite, NPG · H. N. O'Neil, group portrait, oils (Forty-three members in the billiard room of the Garrick Club), Garr. Club · drawing, repro. in Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day (1873), facing p. 128 · engraving, repro. in The Graphic (7 March 1874), 229 · group portrait, wood-engraving (Editors of Punch), BM, NPG; repro. in ILN (18 July 1891) · woodcuts (after photograph by Elliott & Fry), NPG

Wealth at death under £6000: probate, 27 April 1874, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

G. C. Boase, ‘Brooks, Charles William Shirley (1816–1874)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/3563, accessed 20 Oct 2015]