musical burlesque of Dido and Aeneas, played at the St James's Theatre. The following month he married an actress, Cecilia Victoria Ranoe (1841–1870), daughter of James Ranoe, a clerk; the couple had five sons and two daughters. He was called to the bar in 1862, and practised for a short time, but his main interest was in writing. In the early 1860s he wrote several farces in partnership with Montagu Williams, and edited the short-lived journal The Glow-Worm. He then joined the staff of Fun, edited by H. J. Byron. He parted company with Byron when the magazine rejected his proposed 1863 literary burlesque of a Reynolds serial, entitled Mokeanna, or the White Witness. He showed his manuscript to Mark Lemon, editor of Punch, who accepted it for publication; Burnand remained a Punch writer for the rest of his career.Dido was followed by The Îles of St Tropez (1860), Fair Rosamond (1862) and The Deal Boatman (1863), among many others. His most memorable early success was another musical burlesque, Ixion, or the Man at the Wheel (1863), starring Lydia Thompson in the title role, which found audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. By this time Burnand was a skilled negotiator with theatre managements, and he was among the first authors to insist on profit-sharing instead of fixed royalties. For Ixion this brought him a total of around £3,000. Other notable early works included an opéra bouffe, Windsor Castle (1865), with music by Frank Musgrave, and more pun-filled burlesques, including Helen, or, Taken from the Greek, and Guy Fawkes, or The Ugly Mug and the Couple of Spoons, both in 1866. Later in 1866 Burnand had a huge success with the burlesque The Latest Edition of Black-Eyed Susan; or, the Little Bill that Was Taken Up, parodying the three-act melodrama by Douglas Jerrold, Black-Eyed Susan; the show ran for 400 nights at the Royalty Theatre, was played for years provincially and in the US, and was twice revived in London. In 1866, Burnand adapted the popular farce Box and Cox as a comic opera, Cox and Box, with music by the young composer Arthur Sullivan. The piece was written for a private performance but was repeated and given its first public performance at the Adelphi Theatre in 1867. The reviewer for Fun was W. S. Gilbert, who wroteCox and Box became a popular favourite and was frequently revived. It was