Best of
Humor

1897

An Essay on comedy and the uses of the comic spirit


George Meredith - 1897
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Baboo Jabberjee, B.A.


F. Anstey - 1897
    Born in Kensington, London, he was educated at King's College School and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1880. The popularity of Vice Versa immediately made his reputation as a humorist of an original type, but his serious novels The Giant's Robe (1883) and later The Pariah (1889) did not meet with similar success. Guthrie became an important member of the staff of Punch and in 1901 his farce The Man from Blankley's, based on a story that had originally appeared in Punch, was first produced at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. Many other of his stories have been adapted into theatrical productions and films, including Vice Versa which was staged in 1883 and has been filmed many times, usually transposed in setting and with no credit to the original book. Baboo Jabberjee, BA was originally serialised in Punch before book publication in 1897 and presents the reader with a series of misadventures which befall a well-educated Indian cast adrift in England and faced with the difficulties of understanding a different culture. A sequel A Bayard from Bengal appeared in 1902. Reprinted from the J M Dent Wayfarer's Library edition which includes the illustrations that accompanied the original Punch serialisation.