The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose: From William Caxton to P. G. Wodehouse: A Conducted Tour: From William Caxton to P.G.Wodehouse - A Conducted Tour (Oxford Books Prose) (Paperback)

First, it is great to browse through, spending five minutes with some obscure 17th c. author, and the next five with Thurber or Saki.

Secondly, there are at least ten books which I read after having read an extract of them in this compendium - most of whom I would never have heard of otherwise.

Frank Muir has chosen the extracts very carefully, and he guides you through the story behind each author and extract in a very informative way. Even though he clearly values puns and wordplay over all other forms of literary humour, the collection is in evenly balanced - from the surrealist formalism of Perelman to the charming narrative of some preRaphaelite's granddaughter, everything is represented here.

In general don’t expect to roll in too many aisles. This is an anthology of good-quality humorous prose, not a book of gag-lines and one-liners. You may spot here and there, as I did, the occasional piece that is to your particular liking, whether a treasured recollection or even, if we are lucky, something new to us. I was never much of an enthusiast for Punch in general (except when it was edited by Muggeridge) nor of Basil Boothroyd in particular, but I applaud heartily his scathing comments on the programme-notes of a classical concert he attended, and the poke in the eye he administers not so much to Beethoven himself as to his hagiographers who have done so much to distort people’s view of music in general. This was a lucky find – I do not pretend to have read the whole massive book nor do I ever propose to do so, nor indeed can I imagine who ever will. I still fail completely to envisage the readership of a work like this, and I would guess its future belongs mainly on the shelves of the more traditionally-minded libraries and in the hands of browsers in second-hand bookshops searching for curiosities.

Alas, Muir probably had no option but to contribute a preface devoted to the doomed enterprise of trying to define and categorise humour. I find such stuff virtually unreadable, but for all I know it may have value to earnest students of Eng Lit and their instructors, if that is any word for them. I hope they paid Muir well for it, because if they were going to set about such a fatuous project as this in the first place they were lucky to have him. It is all good quality, I make no bones about that. I make a whole ossiary of bones about putting out such a ridiculous publication in the first place, but making allowance for personal prejudice and individual temperament I can, and perhaps ought to, award it four stars.