Tricks of the trade

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.

Tricks of the trade, by Sir John Collings Squire. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78197.