Nineteenth Century

David Garrick’s popularity continued through the nineteenth century.  The Folger has numerous copies of Percy Fitzgerald’s two-volume Garrick biography (1868) that have been Grangerised (interleaved with playbills, prints, portraits, letters, etc. to make them extra-illustrated volumes) by collectors to create impressive tributes to their subject.  A.M. Broadley (1847–1916) was the collector who put together this set, ballooned to seventeen volumes and lionizing Garrick a century after his death.

Percy Fitzgerald (1834–1925) was a tireless chronicler of eighteenth-century theater history.  He produced biographies of Garrick, Kitty Clive, Sheridan, Samuel Foote, the Kembles, and later Sir Henry Irving. 

Another nineteenth-century Garrick phenomenon came in the form of T. W. Robertson’s 1864 play about Garrick’s life, bearing the full title David Garrick: a comedy in three acts (adapted from the French of “Sullivan”, which was founded on a German dramatization of a pretended incident in Garrick's life.  The title role became the signature piece of Charles Wyndham and the play was a sensation in the late nineteenth century.