A Sensation Novel

A Sensation Novel is a comic musical play in three acts (or volumes) written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Thomas German Reed. It was first performed on 31 January 1871 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. New music was later composed by "Florian Pascal" (a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr., 1847-1923), and only four of German Reed's songs survive. The story concerns an author suffering from writers block, who finds out that the characters in his novel are dissatisfied.

The piece satirises the sensation novels popular as pulp detective fiction in the Victorian era. Later in his career, when Gilbert wrote the famous series of Savoy operas with Arthur Sullivan, he reused elements of A Sensation Novel in their opera Ruddigore.