Douglas William Jerrold (3 January 1803 – 8 June 1857) was an English dramatist, journalist, and writer, best known for his satirical wit, his socially critical essays, and his association with the early years of Punch magazine. A prominent figure in Victorian literary and theatrical life, he achieved popular success with plays such as Black-Eyed Susan and was noted for his advocacy of social reform through journalism and drama.
Early life
Jerrold's father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook, Kent. In 1807 the family moved to Sheerness, where Jerrold spent his childhood. He occasionally took a child part on the stage, but his father's profession held little attraction for him. In December 1813 he joined the guard ship , where he had Jane Austen's brother Charles Austen as captain, and served as a midshipman until the Treaty of Paris in 1815. He saw nothing of the Napoleonic Wars save a number of wounded soldiers from Waterloo, but he retained an affection for the sea.
The peace of 1815 ruined Jerrold's father; on 1 January 1816 he took his family to London, where Douglas began work as a printer's apprentice, and in 1819 he became a compositor in the printing office of the Sunday Monitor. Several short papers and copies of verses by him had already appeared in the sixpenny magazines, and a criticism of the opera Der Freischütz was admired by the editor, who requested further contributions. He continued to write sparkling comedies until 1854, the date of his last piece, The Heart of Gold.
thumb|upright| [[Ebenezer Landells's artwork for the first, May 1843, issue of The Illuminated Magazine ]]
He founded and edited for some time, with indifferent success, the Illuminated Magazine, Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, and Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper; and under his editorship from 1852, Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper rose from almost nonentity to a circulation of 182,000. The history of his later years is little more than a catalogue of his literary productions, interrupted now and again by brief visits to the Continent or to the country. The first article of the first issue of the Atlantic Monthly (November 1857) is a lengthy obituary for Jerrold.
Jerrold's figure was small and spare, and in later years he was bowed almost to deformity. His features were strongly marked and expressive, from the thin humorous lips to the keen blue eyes, gleaming from beneath the shaggy eyebrows. He was brisk and active, with the careless bluffness of a sailor. Open and sincere, he concealed neither his anger nor his pleasure; to his sailor's frankness all polite duplicity was distasteful. The cynical side of his nature he kept for his writings; in private life his hand was always open. In politics Jerrold was a Liberal, and he gave eager sympathy to Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini and Louis Blanc. In social politics especially he took an eager part; he never tired of declaiming against the horrors of war, the luxury of bishops, or the iniquity of capital punishment.