From the Introduction: “You never know, Arthur Seymour Sullivan, in his day, was the unofficial composer laureate of England. At the age of thirteen, he had seen his first published composition, an anthem, O Israel, in print. At twenty, his incidental music to The Tempest made him famous, like Byron, practically overnight. At Twenty-two, he was hearing a commissioned cantata, Kenilworth, sung at the Birmingham Festival………………Then there was William Schwenck Gilbert, who, starting with a burlesque, Dr. Dulcamara, produced when he was thirty, diligently pursued a career as a writer of plays—the Wicked World, Sweethearts, Engaged, and a dozen others.” One is either fully a Gilbert and Sullivan devotee, or wholly not. There seems to be no middle course. The present book is likely to produce more votaries, possibly even from the ranks of those who, because they consider G. and S. "old hat," or for some other reason, look upon the British team with kindly superciliousness.