Cruelty and Laughter

Dealing with the forgotten comic literature of eighteenth-century Britain, this book uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy.

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A wildly enjoyable but shocking plunge into the forgotten comic literature of eighteenth-century Britain, Cruelty and Laughter uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy. Delving into an enormous archive of comic novels, jestbooks, farces, variety shows, and cartoons, Simon Dickie finds a vast repository of jokes about cripples, rape, and wife-beating alongside epigrams about syphilis and one-act comedies about hunchbacks in love. In the process, he expands our understanding of many of the century's major authors, including Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Jane Austen, and Henry Fielding. Cruelty and Laughter is an engaging, far-reaching study of the other side of culture in eighteenth-century Britain.