Blue cloth binding with gilt title and horse carriage on the front board. Gilt figure and title on the spine.

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A classic story

Charles Hallam Elton Brookfield (19 May 1857 – 20 October 1913) was a British actor, author, playwright and journalist, including for The Saturday Review. His most famous work for the theatre was The Belle of Mayfair (1906).

Brookfield achieved success in a 20-year acting career, including with the company of Squire Bancroft at London’s Haymarket Theatre in the 1880s. After he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, in 1898, Brookfield focused on writing plays and musical theatre. In his last years, he was Britain’s Examiner of Plays, even though he had been criticised as biased against various playwrights and also for writing a particularly risqué comedy in 1908.

In 1898, after nearly two decades on stage, Brookfield gave up acting when, after a severe illness, he was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis. He then focused, despite continued bouts of ill health and periods of convalescence in Europe, on journalism and writing farcical plays and musical theatre works. In 1900, he became a Roman Catholic and later visited Downside Abbey, in Somerset, where his son became a pupil in 1901. His stage works, in addition to those mentioned above, include the farce The Cuckoo, which premiered at the Avenue Theatre in London (1899), also playing on Broadway the same year at Wallack’s Theatre; a comic opera, The Lucky Star (1899), written in conjunction with Adrian Ross and Aubrey Hopwood for the D’Oyly Carte; a play called I Pagliacci, based on the opera, at the Savoy Theatre (1904); the comic play What Pamela Wanted at the Criterion Theatre (1905); and another comedy, The Lady Burglar at Terry’s Theatre (1906). Brookfield’s most successful work was the long-running Edwardian Musical Comedy, The Belle of Mayfair (1906), together with Basil Hood and Cosmo Hamilton, with music by Leslie Stuart, which also ran on Broadway beginning the same year. Another musical, the same year, was See-See, with lyrics by Ross and music by Sidney Jones, at the Prince of Wales Theatre.  His play I Pagliacci ran on Broadway in 1908. Brookfield’s work as a journalist included several years on the staff of The Saturday Review. In 1902, Edward Arnold published Brookfield’s volume of Random Reminiscences. He and his wife together wrote Mrs Brookfield and her Circle (1905).

One of his later works, Dear Old Charley, another French adaptation, was produced at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1908 starring Charles Hawtrey. Though the critics admitted that the play was funny, it “caused a storm of controversy and became a synonym for the extremest stage naughtiness” and was criticised as unsuitable for the stage. It therefore amazed the public, and amused The New York Times, that Brookfield became the Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1911. He also was attacked in the press as hostile to the “New Drama”, such as Ibsen and Shaw, and also to Oscar Wilde, helping to gather evidence against Wilde in his trial of 1895. However, Brookfield ignored public criticism and performed his duties, although his health continued to fail.

Brookfield succumbed to tuberculosis in 1913 at his home in London, aged 56. He is buried at Stratton on the Fosse, Somerset, in the Catholic Church.