The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse

d.b. wyndham-lewis charles lee billy collins max beerbohm

The editors of this legendary and hilarious anthology write: "It would seem at a hasty glance that to make an anthology of Bad Verse is on the whole a simple matter . . . On the contrary . . . Bad Verse has its canons, like Good Verse. There is bad Bad Verse and good Bad Verse. It has been the constant preoccupation of the compilers to include in this book chiefly good Bad Verse." Here indeed one finds the best of the worst of the greatest poets of the English language, masterpieces of the maladroit by Dryden, Wordsworth, and Keats, among many others, together with an index ("Maiden, feathered, uncontrolled appetites of, 59;. . . Manure, adjudged a fit subject for the Muse, 91") that is itself an inspired work of folly.

Genres poetryhumoranthologiesclassicsfiction20th centuryliterature

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1930

This edition

Format: 264 pages, Paperback
Published: April 28, 2003 by NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9781590170380
ASIN: 1590170385
Language: English

About the author

d.b. wyndham-lewis

Dominic Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL, was a British writer best known for his humorous contributions to newspapers and his biographies. He was educated at Oxford, and prior to serving in the Welch Regiment during World War I, he had intended to pursue a career in the legal profession. But after suffering two bouts of shell shock and one of malaria, he set his sights on journalism.

Following the war, he joined the Daily Express, where he was briefly the newspaper's Literary Editor. In 1919, he was put in charge of the paper's humorous "By the Way" column and adopted the pseudonym "Beachcomber". Then, when, in April 1924, Wyndham-Lewis left to join the Daily Mail, he recommended the better-known J. B. Morton as his successor.

In the mid-1920s, Wyndham-Lewis lived in Paris whilst carrying out historical research. He later wrote several literary biographies, acclaimed for both their spirited subjectivity and their attention to historical detail, taking on subjects ranging from Rabelais and Moliere to Boswell and Habsburg Emperor Charles V.

After returning to Britain in the 1930s, Wyndham-Lewis turned to humorous anthologies, and in 1954 he collaborated with Ronald Searle on The Terror of St Trinian's (under the pen-name 'Timothy Shy'). He also co-authored, with Charles Bennett, the screenplay for the first version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.