Fanny Holland

Fanny Holland (14 September 1847 – 18 June 1931) was an English singer and comic actress primarily known as the creator of principal soprano roles in numerous German Reed Entertainments from 1869 to 1895.

Holland began her career as a concert singer. After a role in an operetta by Frederic Clay, she began to perform in the German Reed Entertainments in London, first in W. S. Gilbert and Clay's Ages Ago (1869). She eventually appeared in scores of German Reed productions, including four more by Gilbert, and in comic operas elsewhere, such as Gilbert's Topsyturveydom at the Criterion Theatre (1874), and with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Opera Comique, as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore from December 1879 to February 1880.

In 1877, she married actor-playwright Arthur Law, with whom she appeared with the German Reeds, sometimes in works written by her husband. She continued to perform with the German Reeds until 1895, when the company dissolved. She later appeared in Henry Arthur Jones's comedy The Manoeuvers of Jane at the Haymarket Theatre in 1898–1899.