ABSTRACT
A. L. V. Campbell, an English actor, manager, and writer, composed more than two dozen dramas, operettas, melodramas, and extravaganzas during his long career. Campbell resigned his government position and, in an act he “never ceased bitterly to repent”, joined the army, where he served unhappily until 1814. In 1838, a change in management led to Campbell’s departure. In 1859, Campbell became a pensioner at the Royal Dramatic College in Woking, where he died in 1870. His plays include several nautical melodramas: Bound ’Prentice to a Waterman, or, The Flower of Woolwich, Rule Britannia, and Tom Bowling. From London’s Thames River to Java’s fetid swamps, Andrew L. V. Campbell’s Bound ’Prentice to a Waterman weaves a tale of romance and skullduggery among distant lands and foreign people. Ultimately, Campbell brings together narratives of colonialism, the marriage market and the slave trade.
