George Grossmith

George Grossmith (1847–1912) was born in London and became one of the most popular comic performers of the Victorian stage, creating many of the principal comic baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas at the Savoy Theatre, including the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance and Ko-Ko in The Mikado, over a career of more than a decade with D'Oyly Carte's company. With his younger brother Weedon he wrote The Diary of a Nobody (1892), first serialized in Punch magazine, a comic novel presented as the diary of a pompous, socially anxious London clerk that has remained continuously in print and is widely regarded as one of the finest comic novels in English. He later toured successfully as a solo entertainer performing his own songs and sketches. He died in Folkestone, Kent, at sixty-four.