Comic Ballads

Mount Vernon: The Peter Pauper Press, 1937. Limited Edition, one of only 1,450 copies. Hardcover, in a slipcase. Very good. 61, [1] pages. Illustrations. The poems are entitled: A Waterloo Ballad, Lieutenant Luff, The Duel, The Poacher, Tim Turpin, The Lament of Toby, the Careless Nurse Mayd, Sally Simpkin's Lament, Faithless Sally Brown, Faithless Nelly Gray, Poem--From the Polish, John Day, Mary's Ghost, the Ghost, and The Supper Superstition. The slipcase has some wear, stains, soiling and fading. The contents may be the work of Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 - 3 May 1845). He was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, had lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson. Hood was the father of the playwright and humorist Tom Hood (1835-1874) and the children's writer Frances Freeling Broderip (1830-1878). In 1818 he applied himself to engraving, which enabled him later to illustrate his various humours and fancies. The series of the Comic Annual, dating from 1830, was popular at the time, which Hood undertook and continued almost unassisted for several years. He would cover all the leading events of the day in caricature, without personal malice, and with an undercurrent of sympathy. Readers were also treated to an incessant use of puns.