Humor Carp, Augustus (H Bashford): Augustus Carp Esq.: By Himself, v.1, 12 Dec 2007.

[Patricia]

Augustus Carp, Esq: by Himself, Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man.
(Illustrated.)

This is a spoof autobiography in the same tradition as the Grossmith’s ‘Diary of a Nobody’.

Augustus Carp is a pious young Christian gentleman (or ‘Xtian’, as he always abbreviates it). I hope that you profit from his edifying account of a young man in the full flower of his southern Metropolitan Xtian manhood.

Here is the opening:

“It is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary. In an age when every standard of decent conduct has either been torn down or is threatened with destruction; when every newspaper is daily reporting scenes of violence, divorce, and arson; when quite young girls smoke cigarettes and even, I am assured, sometimes cigars; when mature women, the mothers of unhappy children, enter the sea in one-piece bathing-costumes; and when married men, the heads of households, prefer the flicker of the cinematograph to the Athanasian Creed - then it is obviously a task, not to be justifiably avoided, to place some higher example before the world.”

History
First published in the UK in May 1924, and published later that year by Houghton Mifflin in the US, the book was written under the pseudonym of the title. The real author was Sir Henry Bashford (1880-1961), a well-respected doctor.
The illustrations were by ‘Robin’, real name Marjorie Blood, who often drew for Punch.

Copyright
The source text was found at www.Eldritchpress.org. This is a site dedicated to free PD and Creative Commons books.
Here is the relevant copyright information:
“We are pleased to present the book, Augustus Carp, Esq: by Himself, Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man, as scanned and presented in HTML by Stewart C. Russell. Since copyright was not renewed in the U.S., it has fallen into the public domain here.”

18 Dec 2007. I'm uploading a new version which corrects some ocr errors spotted by Sparrow. (Thank you, Sparrow.) The original version was downloaded 13 times.

[Sparrow]

for this wonderful book.

It was laugh out loud funny - a great way to start my acquaintance with my new CyBook!

(There were a few minor typos in the text, and I've attached a file listing them, in case they are of any interest. It has the text with the error, paired with the corrected version.)

[Patricia]

Thanks for the corrections, Sparrow. I'll revise the book tomorrow and upload a new version.
(I'm working on a bit more Wilkie Collins tonight.)

[Patricia]

New version uploaded.

[scruss]

I've created a new version of this book, and have uploaded it here: http://scruss.com/carp/Augustus_Carp.epub.

Amongst other things, I incorporated Sparrow's errata list (thank you!), used proper typographic quotes, and SVG line-art derived from the original book scans I made a decade ago.