A Pickle for the Knowing Ones

One of the strangest books in American literature, this rambling 1802 self-portrait was written by an eccentric Massachusetts businessman who had grown rich through a string of absurdly lucky ventures. Across its pages Timothy Dexter praises his own greatness, complains about politicians and clergymen, and holds forth on whatever crosses his mind, all in wild phonetic spelling and with almost no punctuation at all. When readers grumbled about the missing commas and periods, Dexter reprinted the book with a full page of punctuation marks at the end and invited them to ‘peper and solt it as they plese.’ Part unintentional comedy, part genuine curiosity, it endures as a monument to self-belief untroubled by education. This free PDF and EPUB edition keeps Dexter’s original spelling intact.