High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Sensation Novel is a comic musical play in three acts (or volumes) written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Thomas German Reed. It was first performed on 31 January 1871 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. New music was later composed by "Florian Pascal" (a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr., 1847-1923), and only four of German Reed`s songs survive.