The Complete Works of Charles F. Browne, Better Known as "Artemus Ward."

by Artemus Ward (pseudonym), Charles Farrar Browne (creator)

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556 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Pen name of Charles Farrar Browne

American humorist Charles Farrar Browne, pen name Artemus Ward, used backwoods characters and local dialect to comment on current events in his fictional tales of an itinerant showman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Farrar Browne was more of a performer than a writer -- his newspaper columns as "Artemus Ward" first got him noticed, but it's his performances in that persona that made him famous. So there's an oratorical quality to his work that makes it best read out loud, in order to get a sense for the rhythm of the Great Lakes / Midwestern dialect he used ("Near can I forgit the surblime speckticul which met my gase as I alited from the staige with my umbreller and verlise.") The Artemus Ward comic persona is still a familiar one -- a wise-ass hick who's hit the big time, but hasn't let fame go to his head. Browne died at age 32 of tuberculosis. It's too bad he didn't live longer; aside from seeing how his writing and performing might have matured, he died just a decade or two before the first voice recordings.

[Peter Talbot · Rating 4 out of 5]

The printing is terrible: tiny type, innumerable clumsy page settings. The editing is absent at best. But it is an important book for all that: giving a glimpse of the first great American public "humorist", the growing antebellum fascination with humbuggery and the fitful use of misspellings to communicate an American "vernacular". There are gems of entertainment here, too. The satirical treatment of Mormons, Fenians, cutpurses and Americans abroad are all delectable, and instructive for any study of the careers of the bohemian denizens of Papa Pfaff's and the later Western purveyors of mordant satire (Twain, Harte, Billings, Nasby) and those that made careers out of lampooning an Irish pontification on things social and political (Dooley, et al).

No reading of American lit can ignore Ward's short but storied career in stand-up and in print. Recommend over my better judgment.

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comedic stories of a man who was often cited as the first stand up comedian. Ward used to give public speeches of his stories on stage and he was also the man who talked Mark Twain into doing public speeches.

[Galicius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humorous observations from travels during the short life of a mid-nineteenth Century American.