Sunday, January 25, 2015

Swollen-Headed William

E.V. Lucas - Swollen-Headed William: Painful Stories and Funny Pictures after the German! (1914)

Open Library direct link
Open Library main page

One of the blog's ground rules is to avoid any prejudicial material but I just couldn't skip this bit of anti-German propaganda from the start of World War I.  It's a revised version of Heinrich Hoffman's 1845 Struwwelpeter (usually translated as Shock-Headed Peter) and if you're familiar with the original its tales of unruly children who receive disproportionately harsh punishments will seem a natural for the purpose.  In fact this was repeated again in 1941 as Struwwelhitler which isn't online but was reprinted by a German publisher recently.

E.V. Lucas was a very prolific writer in a variety of genres - essays, novels, anthologies, travel books, art criticism, humor and a book about cricket.  He edited Charles Lamb's works and spent 34 years on the staff of Punch.