Odd Craft

by W.W. Jacobs

From "A Spirit of Avarice":

Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they might be, were quite irrelevant to the fact that Mr. Blows had been discovered slumbering in a shed when he should have been laying bricks.

"Take your ugly face off these 'ere works," said the foreman; "take it 'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a spade."

Mr. Blows, in a somewhat fluent reply, reflected severely on the foreman's immediate ancestors, and the strange lack of good-feeling and public spirit they had exhibited by allowing him to grow up.

"Take it 'ome and bury it," said the foreman again. "Not under any plants you've got a liking for."

*

This volume ialso includes "The Money-Box," "The Castaway," "Blundell's Improvement," "Bill's Lapse," "Lawyer Quince," "Breaking a Spell," "Establishing Relations," "The Changing Numbers," "The Persecution of Bob Pretty," "Dixon's Return," "The Third String," "Odd Charges," and "Admiral Peters."

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

William Wymark Jacobs was an English author of short stories and novels. Quite popular in his lifetime primarily for his amusing maritime tales of life along the London docks (many of them humorous as well as sardonic in tone). Today he is best known for a few short works of horror fiction. One being "The Monkey's Paw"(published 1902). It has in its own right become a well-known and widely anthologized classic.


~Literary Works

Many Cargoes (1896)
The Skipper's Wooing (1897)
Sea Urchins (1898) /aka More Cargoes (US) (1898)
A Master of Craft (1900)
The Monkey's Paw (1902)
The Toll House (1902)
Light Freights (1901)
At Sunwich Port (1902)
The Barge (1902)
Odd Craft (1903) : contains The Money Box, basis of Laurel and Hardy film Our Relations (1935)
Dialstone Lane (1902)
Captain's All (1905)
Short Cruises (1907)
Salthaven (1908)
Sailors' Knots (1909)
The Toll House (1909)
Ship's Company (1911)
Night Watches (1914)
The Castaways (1916)
Deep Waters (1919)
Sea Whispers (1926)

Reviews

[William]

Entertaining listening 🔰😀

Fourteen will written British romantic relationship adventure thrillers by W. W. Jacobs. I read these as individual novellas and found them entertaining fun listening 🎶 due to eye damage and issues as Alexa reads to me. I would recommend this novel or the individual novellas. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶to different types of novels 👍🏰😃🏡 2022

[Shane Rajiv]

Great insight into Wapping life written around 1900. Lots of stories in pubs, people cheating you out of your money, fortune tellers. Such fun to read especially if you know Wapping well and like history.

[Mike Jennings]

I love W.W. Jacobs's short stories.

Simple tales written so well you'd think you were having them read to you (by an old ship's hand with a voice like Christopher Lee, in a dark pub, by a fire, with drinks on the table and a storm blowing outside in the night).

[Richard]

More of the same: droll tales of seamen getting into trouble. I've read a number of these collections now and either they're getting better or I am warming up to them. This one includes recurring characters conman Bob Pretty and the hapless Ginger Dick. What I like is the author's ability to put his characters into ridiculous conflicts. No one changes much as a result, and the endings are generally a letdown, but like the ending of a "Three Stooges" short, that's not the point.

[Karen]

I like his novels more than short stories.