Victorian Comedy and Laughter

Louise Lee is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at Roehampton University, UK.                  

1.Introduction:Victorian Comedy & Laughter: Conviviality, Jokes and Dissent.- 2. Chapter 2: Malcolm Andrews, ‘Laughter & Conviviality’. - 3. Chapter 3: Jonathan Buckmaster, ‘Brutal Buffoonery and Clown Atrocity: Dickens’s Pantomime Violence’. - 4. Chapter 4: Peter Swaab, ‘Edward Lear’s Travels in Nonsense and Europe’.- 5. Chapter 5: Bob Nicholson, ‘“Capital Company”: Writing and Telling Jokes in Victorian Britain’.- 6. Chapter 6: Louise Lee, ‘George Eliot’s Jokes’.- 7. Chapter 7: Ann Featherstone, ‘The Game of Words: A Victorian Clown’s Gag-book and Circus Performance’. - 8. Chapter 8: Louise Wingrove, ‘“Sassin’ back”: Victorian Serio-Comediennes and Their Audiences’.- 9. Chapter 9: Oliver Double, ‘“Deliberately Shaped for Fun by the High Gods”: Little Tich, Size and Respectability in the Music Hall’. - 10. Chapter 10: Peter Jones, ‘Laughing Out of Turn: Fin de Siècle Literary Realism and the Vernacular Humours of the Music Hall’. - 11. Chapter 11: Jonathan Wild, ‘What was New about the “New Humour”?: Barry Pain’s “Divine Carelessness”’. - 12. Chapter 12: Matthew Kaiser, ‘Just Laughter: Neurodiversity in Oscar Wilde’s “Pen, Pencil and Poison”




       

“This volume is an enjoyable read and a comfortable entry point into the field of Victorian comedy and laughter, both for those familiar with the subject and for those new to it. I hope that readers of Victorian Studies will take up its invitation. … this book will furnish you with conviviality, jokes, and just the right amount of dissent.” (Laura Kasson Fiss, Victorian Studies, Vol. 65 (1), 2022)