The Online Books Page

Burlesque (Literature)

Here are entered works on burlesque as a literary composition. Works on burlesque as a theatrical entertainment are entered under Burlesque (Theater). Collections of burlesque literature are entered under Burlesques.

See also what's at your library, or elsewhere.

• Comedy
• Satire

• Parody

• Farce
• Grotesque

• Comic literature
• Literature, Comic
• Travesty

• Selected illustrations (unique bound volume of 80 images from Diversarum Nationum Habitus and other Bertelli works, ca. 1590), by Pietro Bertelli
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust

• Modern American Grotesque: Literature and Photography (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2009), by James Goodwin (PDF at Ohio State)
• Apuntes para la Historia de la Caricatura (in Spanish; 1877), by Jacinto Octavio Picón (page images at HathiTrust)
• A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875), by Thomas Wright, illust. by F. W. Fairholt
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust

• Modern American Grotesque: Literature and Photography (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2009), by James Goodwin (PDF at Ohio State)
• A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875), by Thomas Wright, illust. by F. W. Fairholt
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• Christoph Martin Wieland as the Originator of Modern Travesty in German Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1970), by Charlotte M. Craig (HTML at Project MUSE)
• Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c1996), by Martha Bayless (page images at HathiTrust)

• Parody and Decadence: Laforgue's Moralités Légendaires (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1989), by Michele Hannoosh (PDF at Ohio State)

• An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, by George Meredith (Gutenberg text)
• Jonson's Moral Comedy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, c1971), by Alan C. Dessen (PDF with commentary at Northwestern)
• The Dramatic Values in Plautus (1918), by Wilton W. Blancké (Gutenberg text)
• Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, by Henri Bergson, trans. by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (Gutenberg text)
• Retractatio in the Ambrosian and Palatine Recensions of Plautus: A Study of the Persa, Poenulus, Pseudolus, Stichus and Trinummus (Bryn Mawr, PA: Bryn Mawr College, 1911), by Cornelia Catlin Coulter (page images at HathiTrust)

• The Wits, or, Sport Upon Sport (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932), ed. by John James Elson, contrib. by Robert Cox and Francis Kirkman (page images at HathiTrust)

• An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, by George Meredith (Gutenberg text)

• Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns (1975), by James R. Kincaid (HTML at Victorian Web)
• Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), by Laura Kendrick (HTML at UC Press)

• The Inspector-General: A Comedy in Five Acts, by Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol', trans. by Thomas Seltzer (Gutenberg text)

• Tom Cobb (with commentary), by W. S. Gilbert (multimedia at Gilbert and Sullivan Archive)

• The Masquerader, by Katherine Cecil Thurston (Gutenberg text)
• Where There's a Will, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (Gutenberg text)
• Where There's a Will (New York: A. L. Burt Co., c1912), by Mary Roberts Rinehart, illust. by F. Vaux Wilson
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess, illust. by Edward L. Chase (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)
• The Time of Roses (Chicago: M. A. Donohue and Co., n.d.), by L. T. Meade (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)

• Lake of Fire (New York: C. Kendall, c1933), by Lionel Houser, illust. by Steele Savage (page images at HathiTrust)
• Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days, by Arnold Bennett (Gutenberg text)

• The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (London: M. Secker, 1918), by Compton Mackenzie (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (New York and London: Harper and Bros., c1918), by Compton Mackenzie (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)

• Fighting Fraud: Top Scams in 2021, by United States Senate Special Committee on Aging (PDF at senate.gov)

• The Fictions of Satire (originally published 1967; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Ronald Paulson (HTML and PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry, by John Dryden (Gutenberg text)

• Four Essays on Gulliver's Travels (Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1958), by Arthur Ellicott Case (page images at HathiTrust)

• Swift (London: Macmillan and Co., 1882), by Leslie Stephen (Gutenberg text)
• Swift (New York: Harper and Bros., 1882), by Leslie Stephen
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust

• Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2005), ed. by Warren S. Smith (page images at HathiTrust)

• Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2005), ed. by Warren S. Smith (page images at HathiTrust)

• Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2005), ed. by Warren S. Smith (page images at HathiTrust)

• Processed World (full serial archives)

• The Realist, ed. by Paul Krassner (full serial archives)

• Oz (satirical, countercultural Australian magazine published in the 1960s) (partial serial archives)

• Daumier: Der Meister der Karikatur (in German; Munich: Delphin Verlag, c1920), by Arthur Rümann, illust. by Honoré Daumier (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)

• A Book of Burlesques (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, c1920), by H. L. Mencken (Gutenberg text, illustrated HTML, and page images)

• The Man in the Moon, &c. &c. &c. (anonymous, but variously attributed to Hone, Cruikshank, and Canning; 22nd edition; London: W. Hone, 1820), contrib. by William Hone, George Cruikshank, and George Canning
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Barbarous Britishers: A Tip-Top Novel (London: J. Lane, 1896), by H. D. Traill, illust. by Aubrey Beardsley (page images at HathiTrust)
• Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, by Mrs. Barbauld (HTML at Celebration of Women Writers)
• Jon Duan ("by the authors of The Coming K__ and the Siliad"; London: Weldon and Co., 1874), by Samuel Orchart Beeton, Philander Smiff, and Evelyn Douglas Jerrold (page images at childrensbooksonline.org)

• Le Petit Journal des Refusées (originally published 1896; this edition 2009), ed. by Johanna Drucker, contrib. by Gelett Burgess (PDF and Epub with commentary at cnx.org)

• Court Satires of the Restoration (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1976), ed. by John Harold Wilson (PDF at Ohio State)
• Beware the Cat; and The Funerals of King Edward the Sixth (New London: Connecticut College, 1963), by William Baldwin, ed. by William P. Holden (page images at HathiTrust)
• A Satire Anthology (New York: C. Scribner's sons, 1905), ed. by Carolyn Wells (page images at HathiTrust)
• A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling; Pudding and Dumpling Burnt to Pot (Augustan reprint #140; texts originally published 1726 and 1727; Los Angeles: W. A. Clark Memorial Library, 1970), by Henry Carey, ed. by Samuel L. Macey (Gutenberg text, decorated HTML, and page images)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.