The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)

A comic persona delivers mock-naive letters, lectures, and sketches that lampoon mid-nineteenth-century life, targeting religion, show business, politics, and social reform. The collection interleaves war-time sketches and topical pieces with short comic romances, tall tales, travel narratives to the West and abroad, and playful theatrical criticism. The voice blends phonetic dialect, faux publicity, and stage patter to yield self-mocking observations, eccentric anecdotes, and satirical social commentary. Organized into topical sections—essays and letters, war pieces, stories, travel writing, foreign letters, lecture programs, and miscellaneous reminiscences—it alternates topical satire with narrative amusements and performative set pieces.