Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures

Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures is the 1845 comic classic by Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857), the Punch wit and playwright. Night after night, once the candle is out, Mrs Caudle lectures her helpless husband Job on his sins, his lodge meetings, his lent umbrella, while he can only groan toward sleep. The series sent Punch’s circulation soaring and made Mrs Caudle a household name for decades; Victorian readers quoted her the way later ones quoted radio comedy. It remains one of the great sustained jokes of English humour. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.