Who wrote the Diary?

The short answer to this question is that the Grossmith brothers, George and Weedon, wrote it in collaboration. It is usually assumed that George, familiarly known in theatrical circles as “GG” or “Gee Gee,” wrote all the text and Weedon (“Wee-Gee”), who worked as an artist, drew the illustrations for the book version. The evidence for this is quite good. Punch paid George alone for all the episodes.[1] He was no stranger to Punch, his main contribution to it being a series of skits based on his police-court experiences, called “Very Trying.”[2] George himself had featured in some of its good-natured cartoons, in connection with his key roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Certainly he was, in 1888, the most verbally creative of the brothers. He was a formidably prolific song and sketch writer, being the author, eventually, of more than eighty sketches, at least 130 songs, the music for seven operettas, and a quantity of other occasional pieces for Punch and elsewhere.[3]

But Weedon had his literary successes too, though they all date from after the Diary. He published a novel in 1896 and was the sole author of at least nine plays. As a actor he specialised in Pooterish comical and farcical roles. What is more, after he returned from an American theatrical tour in 1887 Weedon stayed with George and his family for eighteen months. He was certainly living with them early in May 1888 at the time when the Diary was presumably being conceived. However, according to Weedon’s recollections much later, they “did not see so very much of each other,” as he was painting in a studio during the day and, like his brother, acting in the evening.[4]

The final word on this subject has to be the title page of the first edition. The careful phrasing there was perhaps licensed by the brothers themselves: “by George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon Grossmith.”

[1] GG’s biographer discovered this from the Punch archives. See Joseph (1982), 167.

[2] “Very Trying: a Record of a Few Trials of Patience” appeared in Punch in ten episodes, January-April 1884.

[3] Kilgarriff (1998) lists 51 songs and sketches, but Joseph’s unpublished bibliography (2003) is far more extensive.

[4] Grossmith (1913), 171. Weedon reproduces there a telegram to himself addressed to Dorset Square and postmarked May. George was then playing in a revival of The Pirates of Penzance.