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School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk

Display artist/maker:

George Augustus Henry Sala

Born: 1828, UK, England, London Died: 1896, UK, England, Hove

Journalist and illustrator. Briefly apprenticed to miniature painter Carl Schiller at the age of fifteen, Sala also worked as a theatre scene-painter and illustrator for e.g. Albert Smith’s and Angus Reach’s ‘The Man in the Moon’. He learnt to engrave and etch and worked for the publisher Adolphus Ackerman as well, producing several panoramas and comic illustrated guidebooks, such as ‘The House that Paxton built' (1851). He first wrote for ‘Chat’ in 1848-9 and later became its editor. In 1851, he started contributing to Charles Dickens’ ‘Household Words’ and travelled, for example, to Russia during the Crimean War in 1856 as a ‘special correspondent’, a role that would also take him, for example, to the United States during the Civil War. His experiences there were first published in the Daily Telegraph and then as ‘My Diary in America in the midst of War’ (1865). He contributed to the Daily Telegraph until his death. In addition, he wrote for Dickens’ ‘All the Year Round’, was the editor of ‘Temple Bar’ (186-63), ‘Banter’ (1867-68) and ‘Sala’s Magazine’ (1892-93). His best-known journalistic sketches, eventually published as ‘Twice around the Clock’ (1859), first appeared in ‘The Welcome Guest’. He authored books such as ‘The Seven Sons of Mammon’ (1862) and ‘Margaret Forster’ (1897) and two dubious autobiographies.