Tricks of the trade by Sir John Collings Squire
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Tricks of the trade by Sir John Collings Squire is a collection of literary parodies and satirical pastiches written in the early 20th century. The book playfully imitates famous writers and reimagines well-known works in alien voices, with a sharp focus on exposing the tics, habits, and mannerisms that make styles instantly recognizable. The collection divides into two parts. “How They Do It” caricatures living and recent figures: rollicking Sussex-and-beer verse for
Belloc, naïve nature-simplicity for Davies, brassbound naval patriotism for Newbolt, gritty melodrama and murder in Masefield’s street-ballad mode, paradox and apocalypse for Chesterton, Celtic “twilight” wistfulness, manufactured folk-songs, a breathless confessional-politico narrative for Wells, and a Shavian playlet where a dramatist barges in on Mahomet. “How They Would Have Done It” recasts classics in borrowed voices: Wordsworth turning The Everlasting Mercy into sober moral narrative; Swinburne’s torrent surging through The Lay of Horatius; Masefield roughening Casabianca; an all-purpose Elizabethan inflating “She Dwelt”; Pope and Gray refitting Tennyson and Spoon River; a “very new” minimalist doing The Lotus-Eaters; Henry James labyrinthizing the Church Catechism; Byron swaggering through The Passing of Arthur; and Tagore spiritualizing “Little Drops of Water.” Throughout, the pieces skewer clichés, rhythms, and favorite themes with witty precision. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Squire, John Collings, Sir, 1884-1958 |
|---|---|
| Title | Tricks of the trade |
| Original Publication | London: Martin Secker, 1918. |
| Note | Chiefly poems. |
| Credits | Jwala Kumar Sista, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PR: Language and Literatures: English literature |
| Subject | Parodies |
| Subject | English wit and humor |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78197 |
| Release Date | Mar 12, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 220 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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