ABSTRACT
During his long career, Edward Fitzball composed over 170 works in a variety of theatrical genres, including burlettas, farces, and opera libretti, as well as some, though relatively few, comedies and tragedies. Born in Norwich, Edward Ball, later Fitzball, completed his apprenticeship to a printer and tried unsuccessfully to publish a poetry magazine. Ironically, despite his fame dramatizing sailors, Fitzball suffered from sea sickness on much of his first voyage during an 1826 vacation in Hastings. In the popular press, Fitzball earned the nickname “Blue-fire” for writing so many plays that innovatively used special effects like pyrotechnics and “Bengal Fire”. Set in an exotic locale, with murder and shipwreck, families separated and reunited, Edward Fitzball’s 1824 The Floating Beacon; or, The Norwegian Wreckers offered audiences much to excite them and brought the author great success. The Floating Beacon combines a story of love and lost parents with a wild setting populated by murderous convicts.
