The Festival of Wit: or, Small Talker, being a Collection of Bon Mots, Anecdotes, etc. of the Most Exalted Characters.

Published by Dresden: Printed for C. and F. Walther, 1795-1805.

About this Item

2 vols. in one: 196, and 222pp., sm. 8vo. Nice copy in contemporary German half calf, spine ruled in blind with a label; rubbed but perfectly sound. First Dresden edition, adapted from the popular jest-book of this title first published in 1782, but with many modern additions including, e.g. in Vol. II a jest attributed to "Mr. Moore, the elegant translator of Anacreon" which was not published until 1800. One of the many features of this work is its numerous jokes at the expense of literary figures. One about Laurence Sterne is on his preaching the day after his wedding: every ear ready to catch the words of his text, which turned out, to their astonishment, to be the following: - "We have toiled all night, and have caught no fish." All editions of this jest-book are rare. By the 1790s the text had expanded by nearly half as much again as the original, with some editions containing eighty or so pages of verse. That is not the case with this Dresden edition, which has only poetical snippets, and deserves some investigation as to the sources of its text, especially in Vol. II. But the only other copy of this Vol. II I can trace is at the Bodleian, although ESTC has seven other locations for the 1795 Vol. I, three in Europe, plus British Library, Huntington, McMaster, U.C. Berkeley, and Yale. Seller Inventory # 12877

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Festival of Wit: or, Small Talker, being...

Publisher: Dresden: Printed for C. and F. Walther, 1795-1805.

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Edition: 1st Edition