The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 6: Artemus Ward's Panorama

Charles Farrar BrowneProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
77K words
Chapters
8

Tags

English Originals Essays and Miscellany Social ObservationPortrait GalleryComplex HumanityLight ReadingHumor ReliefPopular Narrative

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971, and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 6: Artemus Ward's Panorama by Ward. Author: Ward, Artemus, 1834-1867. Language: English. Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature. Release Date: Jun 1, 2002

Editor's review

This book is Part 6 of the Complete Works of Artemus Ward, centered on Artemus Ward's Panorama. Ward was one of the representative figures of nineteenth-century American humor writing, producing laughs through exaggerated spelling, absurd narration, and a stage-like colloquial style; his work was widely popular in the newspapers and on the lecture platform of his day. This part revolves around the panorama, a popular nineteenth-century form of visual entertainment, with the narrator adopting the tone of a guide leading readers to "view" a series of comic scenes; the humor arises from the contrast between the narrator's self-importance and his shallow understanding. For today's readers it serves both as a window onto early American popular entertainment and the humor tradition, and as primary material for studying nineteenth-century American colloquial writing. Readers should note that the language bears the marks of its era: the parody of spelling and dialect is part of the style, not error. It suits readers interested in nineteenth-century American literature, the humor tradition, and the history of popular culture, to be read in sections.

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Reading tips

  1. Read one short chapter first to get a feel for the narrator's voice, then decide whether to read the whole work
  2. Don't correct the spelling parody word by word; just grasp its exaggerated tone
  3. Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century American panoramas and lecture entertainment
  4. Read in sections, one or two at a time, to avoid fatigue from the high density of humor

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8

FAQ

The spellings in the book look like typos—is this a textual problem? No, it is not a textual error. One of Ward's humorous techniques is the deliberate use of exaggerated spelling and dialect writing to create comic effect, a common device in nineteenth-century American newspaper humor. Treat it as part of the style rather than a proofreading oversight.
Can I read this part without having read the first five? Yes. This part is relatively self-contained around the theme of the panorama and does not depend on the plot continuity of the first five parts. Still, reading the Complete Works in order gives a fuller picture of Ward's style and range of subjects.
Is this book suitable for learning English? It is not well suited as a model for standard English, since the text makes heavy use of parodic spelling, dialect, and colloquial expression. If you already have a solid command of English and want to explore nineteenth-century American colloquial style and humorous rhetoric, it can serve as extended reading.

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About the author

Charles Farrar Browne Author · American · 1834–1867

Artemus Ward (1834–1867), whose real name was Charles Farrar Browne, was an American humorist born in Waterford, Maine. He worked early on as a typesetter and newspaper editor, and in 1858, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he created the ignorant traveling-show impresario “Artemus Ward.” Under that pen name he went on to publish writings and give stage lectures, gaining great fame. His works mostly use this character as narrator, generating humor through misspellings, faulty grammar, and naive boastfulness while satirizing the manners and follies of American society. The library holds eight of his works, including the various parts of The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, covering essays, stories, war subjects, a California travel account, and London correspondence. He died of illness in Southampton, England, in 1867 at the age of thirty-three.