Tag: English Opera House

Misattribution of Vardill Story

Author André-Marc Aymé has once again rendered the Society an invaluable service by identifying the European Magazine review of a melodrama titled “Gordon the Gypsey”, staged at London’s English Opera House on 6 August 1822. The review attributes the story of Gordon the Gypsey to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and fails to mention Vardill’s version of the tale, which appeared in the European Magazine two years earlier as “Annals of Public Justice 1: The High Court of Justiciary, and a Gypsy Chief”. Vardill’s tale and the accompanying footnotes were subsequently included verbatim in several compilations of Hogg’s works. A brief account of this misattribution, with contemporary reviews of the melodrama, are now available on the Society’s website.