Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was an English dramatist, librettist and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H. M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. These, as well as most of their other Savoy operas, continue to be performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups. Gilbert illustrated poems for several comic magazines, primarily Fun. The poems, illustrated humourously by Gilbert, proved immensely popular and were reprinted in book form as the Bab Ballads. Gilbert Arthur à Beckett (1837-1891) was an English writer. His pieces include numerous burlesques and pantomimes, The Libretti of Savonarola (1884) and The Canterbury Pilgrims (1884) for the music of Dr. (afterwards Sir) C. V. Stanford. The Happy Land (1873), a daring political satire and burlesque of W. S. Gilbert’s The Wicked World, was written in collaboration with Gilbert, who wrote under the pseudonym F. L. Tomline. With the composer Alfred Cellier, Beckett wrote the operetta Two Foster Brothers (1877). For the last ten years of his life, he was on the regular staff of Punch. He also invented the idea for one of Punch’s best cartoons, Dropping the Pilot.