Chapter 3

Thackeray satirizes publishing and authors in Reading a Poem (New York: Grolier Club, 1911) .

This short play, originally published in the weekly paper The Britannia in 1841 under Thackeray’s most well-known pseudonym, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, provides a satirical view of the publishing industry. (The actor playing a newspaper editor is instructed to “smell very much of stale smoke, and need not shave for two or three days before performing the part.”)

*EC85.T3255.891rd. Gift of William B. Osgood Field, 1944.