[GOLD RUSH] Never too late to mend!

Part Ist. The Grove Farm, at Farnborough … The Emigrant. Part 2 Mr Merton’s Cottage. Part 3. The Log Hut in Australia … Tom Robinson, a Ticket-of-Leave man … Black Jem and Red Ned, Bushrangers … The Inundation in the Wilds of Australia and the Discovery of Gold … Part 4. Bar Parlour, at the King’s Head, Newborough … The Return. The Robbery and Restitution.

Playbill, single sheet (740 x 245 mm), lithograph printed on thin paper, advertising a performance at the Queen’s Theatre, Hull, on Thursday, September 22nd, 1859, horizontal fold across centre, in fine condition.

The English dramatist and novelist Charles Reade wrote several successful plays in the 1850s. Never too late to mend (1856) was his first novel, and was based on his play Gold (1853), which was set on the Australian goldfields. Never too late to mend is an attack on the harsh and abusive English prison system.

This playbill is for an early dramatic adaptation of Reade’s novel. The National Library of Australia holds a copy of a playbill for a performance at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, on Thursday, November 3, 1859 – a mere two weeks after this performance at Hull’s Queen’s Theatre. Two playbills from much later productions are also held in Australian collections: the State Library of Victoria holds a playbill from a production at the Adelphi Theatre, London (1881); and the National Library of Australia holds a playbill from a production at the Theatre Royal and Opera House, Brighton (1883).