Humor Bangs, John K.: The Idiot: An Omnibus. v1. 09 Jan 2019

[GrannyGrump]

The Idiot: An omnibus
John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922)

In this sequence of humorous observations, flights of fancy, wry social commentary, and doggerel verse, a boarding-house resident habitually deflates the pretensions and flawed philosophies of his fellow boarders. They, of course, insist that he is an idiot spouting nonsense.

This collection includes the six books Coffee and Repartee, The Idiot, The Idiot at Home, The Inventions of the Idiot, The Genial Idiot, and Half Hours With the Idiot.

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John Kendrick Bangs (May 27, 1862 – January 21, 1922) was an American author, humorist, satirist, editor and lecturer. Between 1884 and 1906, he worked as editor at a number of magazines, among them Life, Munsey’s, The New Metropolitan, the Harper’s magazines, and the foremost humor magazine of its day, Puck. A highly popular and prolific writer, he had more than sixty books published.

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The contents of this book were first published 1893, 1895, 1900, 1904, 1908, 1917. Text is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

Texts were obtained from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. OCR and printer’s errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted; some spelling and punctuation normalized. Cover design derived from The Genial Idiot first edition.

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[DMcCunney]

Ah, splendid. Bangs is a treat. While you're at it, what are the chances of an anthology with the Houseboat on the Styx stories - The Houseboat on the Styx, The Return of the Houseboat, and Mr. Munchausen?
______
Dennis

[GrannyGrump]

Yes indeed, I am planning the Styx omnibus. Then the Sherlockian/Raffles canon (I found Shylock Homes at the Library of Congress newspaper archives -- whee! but lots of OCR garble.)

But first, the ghosts, which I am working right now, and trying to decide about the illustrations. A fair portion of the pix are not humorous, and not particularly attractive, so I might just omit those. Or, omit all of them. I can't make up my mind. What do you think?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Yes indeed, I am planning the Styx omnibus. Then the Sherlockian/Raffles canon (I found Shylock Homes at the Library of Congress newspaper archives -- whee! but lots of OCR garble.)

Thank you!

But first, the ghosts, which I am working right now, and trying to decide about the illustrations. A fair portion of the pix are not humorous, and not particularly attractive, so I might just omit those. Or, omit all of them. I can't make up my mind. What do you think?

My feel is "all or none". I like illustrated editions, but prefer those with all of the original illustrations. Omitting some because they aren't humorous raises the question of what is funny, and "not attractive" is another judgement call. There is also the matter of why those illustrations were included in the original volume. My suspicion is that if the subject is ghosts, there will inevitably be illustrations that aren't humorous because ghosts aren't by nature funny.

You can always have it both ways, and create an edition with the illustrations, and another that omits them simply to have smaller size.

Can you provide a pointer to the illustrations in question?
______
Dennis

[GrannyGrump]

Oh, these ghosts definitely have a comic side!
Yup, I probably will go with a fully illustrated (which will be HUGE), and a non-illustrated.

I believe the illustrations are taken from the original magazine publications, so it is a very mixed bag of artists and styles, especially as I am doing an omnibus of three collections of short stories.

https://archive.org/details/watergho...ngiala/page/n5

https://archive.org/details/ghostsih...ngiala/page/n7

https://archive.org/details/overthep...ngrich/page/n7

[litemotif]

I like the illustrations (if that matters ).

[radius]

Thanks for this! I've only read the Raffles/Holmes stuff and Alice in Blunderland, so I'm excited to sample more Bangs.