George Blink (b. Warley
Camp, Essex, about 1798; d. Brighton ,
Sussex
British Post Office official (President, Islington), and
occasional dramatist. George Blink was one
of the ten children of William Blink (b. c. 1760) and Sarah Lenham (b. c.
1765). In Islington on 17 April 1822, Blink married Mary Anne
Cliffe (1802-1873). They had four children, two sons followed by two daughters.
Blink
authored at least three plays that were performed and subsequently printed up
as small pamphlets. The dating of the
pamphlets, as well as the dating of the first performances of any play of that
time period, is extremely difficult.
Blink’s
most significant work is The Vampire
Bride: or, The Tenant of the Tomb: A Romantic Drama, in Two Acts (London : J. Duncombe,
[1830]). This premiered as the opening
piece at the Sadler Wells Theatre in London
on 8 March 1830, followed by performances of “Paul and Virginia” and “The
Flying Dutchman.” “The Vampire Bride”
was also staged elsewhere in England ,
and occasionally revived, such as at the Queen’s Theatre in Manchester on 28 September 1839. Blink’s play
is based on the anonymous English translation of Ernst Raupach’s “Lasst die
Todten Ruhen” (1822), published as “Wake Not the Dead” in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (1823). Raupach’s name is nowhere mentioned. A later
edition, with slightly different text, appeared as The Vampire Bride: or, Wake Not the Dead: A Melo-Drama in Two Acts
(London: T. H. Lacy, [1854]).
| Frontispiece and title page of the 1854 edition. |
Other plays
by Blink include The Tiger at Large; or,
the Cad of the “Buss”; A Comic Burletta,
in One-Act (London: Chapman &
Hall, 1837), first performed at the Strand Theatre on 8 May 1837; and Blind Man’s Buff: or, Who Pays the Bill: A Farce in One Act (London: John K. Chapman and Co., 1850). A play of this latter title had debuted at
the Royal Amphitheatre in September 1815, but this was probably an entirely
different play. The Lord Chamberlain licensed another play with this same title
on 18 August 1837, and this is probably the one by Blink.
NB: An
earlier version of this entry appeared in my column “Notes on Neglected
Fantasists”, Fastitocalon no. 1
(2010).