Discover witty takes on subjects from colonial clothes to womens roles in colonial times to sot-weed (tobacco) in this celebration of really old fashioned American humor.

Link: http://www.archive.org/details/witandhumordays00hollrich

THE WIT AND HUMOR OF COLONIAL DAYS
(1607-1800)

(Excerpt from Preface to the book)

If there is any branch of literature in which America has excelled other modern nations, it is humor. It is doubtful, for instance, whether any other nation has produced during the last half-century a wit surpassing Josh Billings in shrewd sarcasm, Artemus Ward in ridiculous extravagance, or Mark Twain in solemn statement of the outrageously untrue. This ability in the American, however, of "seeing the point " is by no means a development of the last half-century. It is as old as the nation. The colonists had scarcely landed in Virginia before witty letters telling of ludicrous sights and mishaps in the raw settlement began to go back to England ; while in New England there soon was heard a taunting satire like that of the Hebrew prophets of old. Nor has the stream of wit and humor once ceased from that day to this. (end of excerpt)

CONTENTS

EARLY COLONIAL HUMOR

1. Question as to the first American humorist
2. Many wits
3. A comparison of Northern and Southern colonial conditions
4. Two wits of old Boston
5. Dr. William Douglass
6. Famous men and folk-lore

THE HUMOR OF THE REVOLUTION

1. War and Satire
2. Wit conflicts between Tories and
3. Tory satires not equal to patriots’
4. Yankee use of British satire
5. The leaders in Tory wit
6. Joseph Stansbury
7. The public solemnness of colonial statesmen
8. Philip Freneau
9. John Trumbull

THE HUMOR OF THE REPUBLIC

1. The origin of the Hartford Wits
2. The Hartford Wits as individuals
3. Joel Barlow
4. Richard Alsop
5. Theodore Dwight
6. Democratic replies to the Wits

THE HUMOR OF THE COLONIAL STAGE

1. The colonists and the theatre
2. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Link: http://www.archive.org/details/witandhumordays00hollrich