Matthew Kaiser - A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Empire

A Cultural History of Comedy

General Editors: Andrew McConnell Stott and Eric Weitz

Volume 1

A Cultural History of Comedy in Antiquity

Edited by Michael Ewans

Volume 2

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages

Edited by Martha Bayless

Volume 3

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Early Modern Age

Edited by Andrew McConnell Stott

Volume 4

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Enlightenment

Edited by Elizabeth Kraft

Volume 5

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Empire

Edited by Matthew Kaiser

Volume 6

A Cultural History of Comedy in the Modern Age

Edited by Louise Peacock

Editorial cartoon The White (?) Mans Burden by William H. Walker, Life, 1899.

The Browns erect an impromptu wigwam, from Thomas Onwhyns Mr. and Mrs. John Browns Visit to London to see the Grand Exposition of All Nations, 1851.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown visit the theatre during the Great Exhibition by Thomas Onwhyn, 1851.

Cartoon depicting Victorian freakshow patrons flocking to the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, Punch, 1847.

A Shocking Bad Knight in Fishers Comic Almanac 1851.

Crockett Defending the Mouth of the Mississippi in Davy Crocketts Almanac 1847.

Crockett Delivering His Celebrated War Speech in Davy Crocketts Almanac 1847.29

Uncle Sam reviews the presidential candidates in Thomas Nasts May the Best Man Win! in Phunny Phellow, 1864.

American Humorists in Moores Rural New-Yorker, 1873.

Portrait of William Hazlitt from a miniature by John Hazlitt, 1800.

An 1878 engraving of American humorist Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne).

Playbill for Christys Minstrels at the Mechanics Hall, New York City, 1849.

Entertainer Bert Williams in his Nobody persona, 1922.

George Grossmith as John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer at the Savoy Theatre, London, England, 18845.

Irene Vanbrugh as Gwendolyn Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895.

Advertisement for The Simple Pimple starring George Robey, 1891.

Cover of Score of Airs from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, 1885.

Advertisement for the Hanlon-Lees Le Voyage en Suisse, c. 1880.

Pantomime artist Dan Leno, c. 1896.

Pen and ink drawing of Bessie Bellwood on stage, c. 1880s.

Charlie Chaplin (left) and actor Eric Campbell in the 1917 silent film The Cure.

Marie Lloyd promotional poster, 1898.

Sheet music for E.W. Mackneys The Whole Hog or None, London, c. 1850.

La nouvelle chanson de Thrsa [Nourrice Sur Lieux] (Thrsas new song [Live-in Nanny]) by Andr Gill in La Lune, 1866.

American comedy team Joe Weber and Lew Fields as their Dutch Act characters, Mike and Meyer.

Publicity postcard for male impersonator Vesta Tilley, c. 1910.

Canadian singer and vaudeville performer Eva Tanguay, c. 1909.

Joseph Grimaldi as Clown in Harlequin & Asmodeus or Cupid on Crutches, Theatre Royal Covent Garden, December 26, 1810, from a drawing by R. Norman, published by Rudolph Ackermann, London, England, 1811.

The Gentleman Next Door declares his Passion for Mrs. Nickleby by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), Nicholas Nickleby, 1839.

John Tenniel, illustration of Alice transforming into a long-necked creature from the 1890 edition of Alice in Wonderland.

Actor William Sydney Penley in drag as Charleys Aunt in 1892.

Charlie Chaplin caught as a human cog in a vast machine in Modern Times, 1936.

True Williams, Return in War-Paint, in Mark Twains The Innocents Abroad, 1869.

Seal of New Netherland, c. 1650.

Davy Crockett fights off a cougar, from 1859 edition of Life of Col. David Crockett.

The Hearty Laugh of the Gentler Sex, c. 1875 (engraving from The Philosophy of Laughter and Smiling).

The Superlative Laugh, or Highest Degree of Laughter, c. 1875 (engraving from The Philosophy of Laughter and Smiling).

A nineteenth-century phrenologist mapping a boys scalp, n.d.

A pleased monkey in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872.

J. J. Grandville, A young rabbit refusing the advances of a pig-prostitute, in Les mtamorphoses du jour, 1829.

George Cruikshank, Oliver asking for More, Oliver Twist, 1837.

Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), The Internal Economy of Dotheboys Hall, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839.

Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), Our Housekeeping, David Copperfield, 1850.

Sarah Balkin is a lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage (2019) and articles on nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century literature, theater, and performance. Her current research examines the historical emergence of deadpan performance (18301930) and its derivations in contemporary queer and feminist comedy.

Gregg Camfield is Provost and Vice Chancellor of University of California, Merced. He is the author of Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (1997) and Sentimental Twain: Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy (1994), and the editor of The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain (2003) and the Bedford Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2008).

Rob Jacklosky is Professor of English and Director of the Core Curriculum at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, Bronx, NY. His essay on Dickenss influence on Donna Tartts The Goldfinch appears in the collection Dickens After Dickens (2020), edited by Emily Bell. His other publications include essays on Matthew Arnold and Frank Sinatra. He has chronicled his experiences as an incompetent supernumerary in American Ballet Theatre and Met Opera productions for McSweeneys Internet Tendency. His short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Sonora Review, Prairie Schooner, and Dappled Things, among other venues.

Matthew Kaiser is Associate Professor and Chair of English at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept (2012), the translator of Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the editor of seven books, including, most recently, An Apology for Idlers and Other Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Milena Kozi obtained her doctorate in Media Studies from Kings College London. Her thesis, focused on the 1990s NBC sitcom Seinfeld, elucidated the role played in humor by incongruity mechanisms and play cues/frames, as well as by marginal phenomena of performance, such as corpsing. She holds an MPhil in English and Applied Linguistics from Cambridge University, and has taught linguistics and sociolinguistics at the Open University in London and at Kingston University in London. Her multidisciplinary work has appeared in such venues as