The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, Son-in-law to Mother Winter

Crouch, Humphrey, active 1635-1671Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.0
Word count
30K words
Chapters
3

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Vengeance and GratitudeJianghu FeudLight ReadingHumor ReliefShort StoriesSatirical StyleFolk LegendBritish Folklore

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 Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, Son-in-law to Mother Winter by CrouchAuthor: Crouch, Humphrey, active 1635-1671,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 20, 2014

Editor's review

This is a seventeenth-century English collection of folk humor centered on the pranks of Tom Tram, steeped in the traditions of street jests and carnivalesque comedy. Its value lies not in tightly plotted narrative but in what it reveals about early modern English popular reading: short, exaggerated, generating laughs through trickery and reversal, with blunt language and brisk pacing. For scholars of folk narrative, jest literature, or early print culture, it is a primary source for understanding the appeal of the "cheap chapbook"; for general readers, it is more like a volume of old-time jokes to dip into for amusement rather than read straight through. A caveat: many of the pranks read as rude or even offensive by today's standards, and they should be read in their historical context—as a sample for understanding the boundaries of past humor, not as a model of behavior.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Treat it as a jest collection: read a few pieces at a time rather than seeking continuity.
  2. When you hit a crude passage, note the historical context first, then assess the logic of the humor.
  3. Read it alongside English folk jests or fool tales to observe recurring motifs.
  4. If using it for research, annotate types of jokes and narrative patterns as you read.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for children? Not really. The pranks often involve deception, trickery, and even crude scenes that by today's standards are not appropriate for children. If you want to introduce children to folk tales, choose adapted versions with gentler language and content.
Are the stories connected to one another? Only loosely. Most stories revolve around the same character but are independent of one another, so reading them in order is not necessary. You can dip in anywhere, which suits fragmented reading time.
Why isn't the humor funny to modern readers? Standards of humor change over time. Many jokes here rest on mocking people's status and rude behavior, which contemporary readers took for granted but which may feel offensive today. Understanding this gives a clearer view of folk humor's historical character than trying to laugh along.

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About the author

Crouch, Humphrey, active 1635-1671 Author · English

Crouch, Humphrey (active 1635–1671) was a seventeenth-century English writer whose exact life and education are not recorded in publicly available sources, and public information about him is limited. He is known for popular chapbooks and practical读物, written for ordinary readers in plain language and concerned with everyday needs and entertainment. Only one of his works is held in this collection, The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, Son-in-law to Mother Winter, a humorous chapbook of the kind popular at the time, centering on the hero's mischievous tricks and comic escapades and colored by folk humor and popular storytelling. Such publications circulated widely in early modern English print culture, and Crouch's style reflects the popular publishing orientation of the period; his work also offers material for understanding the reading tastes of ordinary townspeople of his day.