Henry Pottinger Stephens
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Henry Pottinger Stephens, also known as Henry Beauchamp (1851 – February 11, 1903) was an English dramatist and journalist.
"Pot" Stephens was born in Barrow-on-Soar Leicestershire. He started his career as a journalist, working for The Daily Telegraph and Tit-Bits, among others, and was the first editor of Topical Times.
Stephens wrote his first burlesque, Back from India in 1879 under the aegis of the German Reed's management at St. George's Hall. He soon wrote lyrics for F. C. Burnand's Robbing Roy burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre and collaborated with Burnand on a couple of other burlesques.
After Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore became a hit, Stephens was inspired to collaborate with composer Edward Solomon on a comic opera, Billee Taylor (1880), which opened the same year as The Pirates of Penzance. Billee Taylor received favourable comparisons with Gilbert and Sullivan's piece in the press and caused its authors to be hailed briefly as the equals of Richard D'Oyly Carte's prized writing team. Solomon and Stephens also had a success in Claude Duval (1881). Carte produced successful tours of Claude Duval and Billee Taylor in America.
Stephens returned to burlesque, and his The Vicar of Wide-awake-field and Little Jack Sheppard (both 1885), under George Edwardes's management at the Gaiety Theatre, set the fashion for the 'new burlesque' in London. Stephens had one more international success, also in tandem with Solomon, with The Red Hussar (1889). Stephens also wrote novels, plays, pantomimes, and a revue, A Dream of Whittaker's Almanack, with Walter Slaughter, Florian Pascal, Georges Jacobi, and Walter Hedgecock, in 1899. He also acted in some of these. He died in London.
