George Augustus Sala

George Augustus Henry Fairfield Sala (24 November 1828 – 8 December 1895) was an author and journalist who wrote extensively for the Illustrated London News as G. A. S. and was most famous for his articles and leaders for The Daily Telegraph. He founded his own periodical, Sala's Journal, and the Savage Club. The former was unsuccessful but the latter still continues.

Life

Sala was born on 24 November 1828 in London. His legal father was Augustus John James Sala (1789–1829) the son of an Italian who came to London to arrange ballets at the theatres. His natural father and godfather was Captain Charles "Henry" Fairfield, an acquaintance of his mother, Henrietta Catharina Simon (1789–1860), an actress and teacher of singing. She was the daughter of Catherina Cells, a former slave, and Demerara planter D. P. Simon. His great-grandmother was the Caribbean entrepreneur Dorothy Thomas. He was at school at Paris from 1839 but his family returned to England due to the political unrest in the city. He learnt drawing in London, and in his earlier years he did odd jobs in scene-painting (for John Medex Maddox at the Princess's Theatre, London) and book illustration. The connection of his mother and elder brother (Charles Kerrison Sala) with the theatre gave him useful introductions to authors and artists.

At an early date he tried his hand at writing, and in 1851 attracted the attention of Charles Dickens, who published articles and stories by him in Household Words and subsequently in All the Year Round, and in 1856 sent him to Russia as a special correspondent. About the same time he got to know Edmund Yates, with whom, in his earlier years, he was constantly connected in his journalistic ventures and also become a lifelong friend of the penny dreadful publisher Edwin Brett. In 1860, over his own initials "G.A.S.", he began writing "Echoes of the Week" for the Illustrated London News, and continued to do so until 1886, when they were continued in a syndicate of weekly newspapers almost to his death. William Makepeace Thackeray, when editor of the Cornhill, published articles by him on Hogarth in 1860, which were issued in column form in 1866; and in the former year he was given the editorship of Temple Bar, which he held until 1863.