The Book of Ballads, Edited by Bon Gaultier [pseud.]

Victorian literary satire at its most gleeful. Martin and Aytoun, writing as the fictional Bon Gaultier, gleefully skewer the romantic nonsense clogging up the mid-century literary scene: the glorified criminals, the melodramatic posturing, the whole enterprise of taking ruffians seriously. They counter this cultural madness with verse that's sharp, funny, and deliberately ridiculous. A Moorish maiden who turns the tables on a knight pursuing her, an American hero menaced by a snapping turtle, bandits who speak in the elevated tones of Shakespearean tragedy only to be revealed as bumbling fools. The joke isn't just that these romanticized criminals are ridiculous, it's that anyone ever took them seriously in the first place. Illustrated by the great Victorian cartoonists Leech, Doyle, and Crowquill, this collection pulses with the same manic energy as Punch magazine at its most vicious. For anyone who delights in watching serious literature get poked full of holes.