Background

Henry Arthur Jones was born on September 20, 1851, at Granborough, Winslow, Buckinghamshire.

Education

Until he was 13, he attended Grace's Classical and Commercial Academy in Winslow, where he inherited property on his father's death.

Career

Later he was sent to work for his uncle, who had a draper’s shop on the Kentish coast at Ramsgate. Jones stayed for three and a half years in Ramsgate before moving to Gravesend, which was nearer to London, and to another draper’s shop. In 1869, he moved into London, where he was to remain for most of his life. Self-educated, he read widely. His favorite authors were John Milton, Herbert Spencer, and Samuel Butler, and his favorite works were about scientific advancements. In his first year in London, Jones wrote several unstaged one-act plays and an unpublished novel. Hearts of Oak, the first of his plays to be produced, premiered at the Theatre Royal, Exeter, on May 29, 1879, and the production encouraged Jones to devote his whole energies to drama. A Clerical Error, his first London play, was performed in October, 1879. Jones’s reputation was secured by The Silver King, which opened at the Princess’s Theatre on November 16, 1882. The success of this play provoked a dispute over its authorship, which Wilson Barrett, an actor-manager, claimed to share with Jones and Henry Herman. A 1905 legal settlement denied Barrett’s claim. The Silver King gave Jones some degree of financial security. His experience with Barrett soured Jones’s attitude toward the prevailing actor-manager theatrical hierarchy of his day, but The Crusaders, his self-financed effort, which was produced in November, 1891, proved to be a financial failure.

Additional melodramatic plays that achieved popularity followed, such as Michael and His Lost Angel (1896). But Jones was by now moving in high society, and a vein of more sophisticated comedy was beginning to appear in works such as The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894) and The Liars (1897). His plays, however, display a rigid acceptance of the Victorian moral code. While this conservative attitude lost him the sympathy of new liberal audiences, his works were much more commercially viable than those of George Bernard Shaw, who was among Jones’s followers in Britain, and of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Jones’s plays show considerable skill in theatrical construction, and Mrs. Dane’s Defence (1900) has a finely wrought cross-examination scene. By this time he had become one of the best-known playwrights in London, and had seen more than fifty of his plays produced. In 1906 one of his plays, The Hypocrites, was produced in New York, followed by The Lie (1914).

Henry Arthur Jones died at home on January 7, 1929, after years of ill-health.

Achievements

• Henry Arthur Jones was a noted playwright who first achieved prominence in the field of melodrama and who later contributed to Victorian “society” drama.

Works

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  • Dolly reforming herself;

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  • The Middleman: A Play In Four Acts

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  • The Silver King: A Drama in Five Acts

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  • Saints and Sinners, a New and Original Drama of Modern English Middle-Class life, in Five Acts. Reprinted September, 1908: April, 1914

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  • The Drama League Series of Plays. Volume V. Mary Goes First: A Comedy in Three Acts and an Epilogue

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  • The Plays of Henry Arthur Jones; The Dancing Girl. A Drama in Four Acts

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  • The Lie; A Play in Four Acts, pp. 1-108

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  • The Divine Gift; a Play in Three Acts

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  • Shadow of Henry Irving
  • The Crusaders An Orginal Comedy of Modern London Life
  • ***RE-PRINT*** Mary goes first; a comedy in three acts and an epilogue
  • The relations of the drama to real life: A lecture delivered at Toynbee Hall on Saturday evening, November 13th, 1897

Views

Quotations: "O God! Put back Thy universe and give me yesterday. "

"If there is one beast in all the loathsome fauna of civilization I hate and despise it is a man of the world. "

Connections

In 1869 Henry Arthur Jones became engaged to Jane Eliza Seeley. On September 2, 1875, they married. They had six children, including the first child who was stillborn.

Father:

Silvanus Jones

Silvanus Jones was a farmer.

Mother:

Elizabeth Jones

Wife:

Jane Eliza Seeley

Daughter:

Gertrude Mary (Jones) Albery

Daughter:

Winnifred Arthur (Jones) Faber

Daughter:

Ethelwyn Sylvia (Jones) McDonnell

References

• Henry Arthur Jones Portland Place Roxy Barton Mrs Brown Potter190 179Q019
• Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones (Modern Dramatists)
• Henry Arthur Jones' Dramen (German Edition)