ギルバートは『H.M.S. Pinafore』、『ミカド』のストーリーをオペラ作品に含まれていない話を追加して児童文学『The Pinafore Picture Book』、『The Story of The Mikado』として編集した[10][11][12]。他の多くの児童書にもオペラの筋書、キャラクター、出来事などが引用されている[13]。19世紀、最も人気のあったギルバートとサリヴァンの歌や音楽はダンス音楽として使われていた[14]。
^"Form and symmetry he seems to possess by instinct; rhythm and melody clothe everything he touches; the music shows not only sympathetic genius, but sense, judgement, proportion, and a complete absence of pedantry and pretension; while the orchestration is distinguished by a happy and original beauty hardly surpassed by the greatest masters." Sir George Grove. "Arthur Sullivan 1842–1900", The Musical Times, December 1900, accessed 28 October 2007
^Gian Andrea Mazzucato in The Musical Standard of 30 December 1899: "[Sullivan] ... will ... be classed among the epoch-making composers, the select few whose genius and strength of will empowered them to find and found a national school of music, that is, to endow their countrymen with the undefinable, yet positive means of evoking in a man's soul, by the magic of sound, those delicate nuances of feeling which are characteristic of the emotional power of each different race." Quoted in the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Journal, No. 34, Spring 1992, pp. 11–12