Broad Grins

Three alehouse companions sit over the embers, arguing about poets, playwrights and the fashion for ghostly novels. Their debate introduces George Colman's comic tales in verse, where grand literary language repeatedly runs into ordinary inconveniences. In one tale, a lonely country house, a cook called Molly Dumpling and a gardener provide the ingredients for a parody of ominous storytelling. Even a creaking door receives a practical explanation.

The collection brings together pieces formerly published as My Night-Gown and Slippers with additional verse tales. Colman's prefatory exchange with his booksellers shares the poems' fondness for puns and jokes about writing itself. Elsewhere, a knight and his powerful servant become entangled in a farcical attempt to move a fallen friar. Rhymes, interruptions and exaggerated comparisons keep the narrator conspicuously present. Readers interested in literary satire can see how the poems turn fashionable terrors, authorial pretensions and solemn storytelling into comedy.