Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, the witty librettist of the classic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta partnership, was, says Jane Stedman, "an iconoclast who, paradoxically, was not a revolutionary." He was still a Victorian gentleman, after all. Stedman makes clear however that his poking of fun at the pomposity and hypocrisy of Victorian Britain laid the groundwork for the social criticism of serious dramatists like George Bernard Shaw. Copiously researched , with access to the D'Oyly Carte family papers (Richard D'Oyly Carte was the impresario who ran the Savoy Theater, working closely with Gilbert and Sullivan) Stedman provides a thorough portrait, and in addition gives expert analysis of his work, both serious and comic.