George Cruikshank's Ode to October

Cruikshank, Return to Town

Loretta reports:

Comic poetry from the early 19th century tends to be rife with puns and topical references completely incomprehensible to most readers today, even those of us who spend large portions of our time studying or writing about the era.  With a little concentration, however, this one becomes reasonably clear.  And it’s certainly relevant to anybody who’s gone on a holiday/vacation that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 

I also wanted to introduce those of you who haven’t already encountered it to the dizzyingly prolific George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanack.  While some of the prose and poetry is written in what is, to the 21st century reader, more or less a foreign language, his illustrations offer wonderful glimpses of London in the early 1800s.

Cruikshank, Return to Town