Edwardian musical comedy was a form of British musical theatre that extended beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions, beginning in the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following the First World War.

Between In Town in 1892 and The Maid of the Mountains, premiering in 1917, this new style of musical theatre became dominant on the musical stage in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world. The popularity of In Town and A Gaiety Girl (1893), led to an astonishing number of hits over the next three decades, the most successful of which included The Shop Girl (1894), The Geisha (1896), Florodora (1899), A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), The Earl and the Girl (1903), The Arcadians (1909), Our Miss Gibbs (1909), The Quaker Girl (1910), Betty (1914), Chu Chin Chow (1916) and The Maid of the Mountains (1917).