AustLit

An advertisement for the Royal Victoria Theatre production of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins's No Thoroughfare and John Maddison Morton's The Two Buzzards on 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 July 1868.

An advertisement for the Royal Victoria Theatre production of Walter Cooper's Colonial Experience and Thomas Morton's Sink or Swim on 20 July 1868. The evening was a 'complimentary benefit ... to Walter H. Cooper'.

The advertisement notes that characters in Sink or Swim are to be 'sustained by gentlemen connected with the Sydney press' and that 'a prologue written for the occasion by Frank Hutchinson, Esq., will be delivered by Miss Rosa Cooper.'

An advertisement, probably placed by Samuel Bennett (sole proprietor, printer and publisher of the Empire), for the sale of a single cylinder printing machine. The sale is being offered 'to make room for a new machine daily expected from England'.

A detailed report on the 16 July 1868 lecture delivered by Sheridan Moore at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts. The lecture dealt with the life and literary career of James Lionel Michael. It included references to Moore and Michael's friendship, to Moore's conviction as to the depth of Michael's (at times disputed) Christian faith, and to Moore's firm belief that Michael's cause of death was neither suicide nor accident, but murder.

A detailed record of the the beginnings of the theatre in the colony of New South Wales from 1789 onwards. The particular focus of the article is the Royal Victoria Theatre, but background is also provided on the origins of the Theatre Royal under Barnett Levy, and on early theatrical performances by convicts and 'officers of the troop'.

The writer for the Empire notes the 'scarce public support' for the Royal Victoria Theatre production of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins's No Thoroughfare. The writer says: 'The public cannot expect a theatre to be kept open if it does not in some degree provide the means, and give substantial encouragement to those who undertake the responsibility of amusing it.'

A report on the 14 July 1868 entertainment at St Jude's, Randwick, provided by Sheridan Moore and others. Moore's recitals included several poems by James Lionel Michael and one of the Ingoldsby Legends, 'The Jackdaw of Rheims'.