 Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious.After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including his "Bab Ballads", short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often for "Fun" magazine.He also began to write burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his "topsy-turvy" style.