Short stories
Artemus Ward, His Book
Charles Farrar Browne · 1862
Synopsis
A barely literate showman, who takes wax figures, snakes and a kangaroo from town to town, writes to the newspaper to tell of his tours. He visits a Shaker community, a gathering of spiritualists, the head of the Mormons at Salt Lake, and reports an interview with President Lincoln. He harangues his fellow citizens on the crisis of the Union, misspells everything, complains about bad payers, and, without seeming to touch them, dismantles along the way the pretensions and enthusiasms of his age.
Context
The volume collects the letters published in the Plain Dealer and in Vanity Fair since 1858. Lincoln read one chapter of it, about an outrage committed at Utica, at the opening of the meeting of 22 September 1862 at which he presented the preliminary emancipation proclamation to his ministers; only Stanton did not laugh. Mark Twain, who had met him at Virginia City in December 1863, described his manner of gravely telling an absurd story and devoted a lecture to him.
Who it is for
Short pieces in deliberately faulty spelling, which makes the reading slow at first and translation almost impossible. Not translated into French.
Prizes and reception
More than forty thousand copies sold, and an author whose manner Mark Twain analysed at length.
Sources for this page 11
The pages consulted to check this page.