The Belle of New York:The 1897 Musical Comedy: Complete Book and Lyrics (Historical Libretto)

After receiving mixed reviews in its New York production, Hugh Morton's satire of life in the 1890s, "The Belle of New York," was a smash hit in London and would go on to be the first American musical to run for more than year. As the New York Times summed up, the musical "concerns the misfortunes of a good-hearted but weak young man, who wastes his substance in riotous living, and is disinherited by his father in favor of a pretty Salvationist, to whom, of course, the young man, after serving a term as a soda fountain, is happily married." Thrown into the plot are a comic opera singer and her vulgar father, a French chef's daughter, a musical-hall star and her "brudder," a sensationalist press, hordes of dancing girls, a trip to Chinatown, and a whole band of social reformers.