REJECTED ADDRESSES; OR, THE NEW THEATRUM POETARUM
London, England: James Murray, 1851. Twenty-Second Edition with Additional Notes. Hardcover. 16 mo (7 in. x 4 1/2 in.) Navy ribbed cloth over boards, ruled in blind with corner decorations. Gilt letterin to spine. Rubbing and wear to extremities, but yet solidly bound. A 19th century version of the 20th century "Bad Hemingway" competition; only the entries here were entirely concocted by the wickedly self-satisfied brothers. The resulting book proved a bestseller and went into numerous reprintings.
On August 14th, 1812, the brothers James and Horace Smith posted an advertisement which appeared in most of the daily newspapers. They announced their sponsoring of a "free and fair competition for an Address to be spoken..." before the public audience, on October, 10th 1812, upon the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, which had been destroyed by fire.
--------------------------
"As none of the actual entries were considered adequate in the end, Lord Byron was commissioned to write one specially. But when the brothers James and Horace Smith heard of the result of the competition, they planned a volume of parodies of writers of the day (Wordsworth, Byron, Scott, Southey, etc.), to be published as supposed failed entries and issued to coincide with the theatre’s opening..." (Wikipedia). Good. Item #100087
In the prefaces to this later printing, the brothers Smith delightfully wrote: "...One hundred and twelve Addresses have been sent in, each sealed and signed, and mottoed, "as per order," some written by men of great, some by men of little, and some by men of no talent...One hundred and eleven of the Addressesmust, of course, be unsuccessful: to each of the authors, thus infallibly classed with the genus irritabile,
...The Editor...has...culled what has the appearance of flowers, from what possessed the reality of weeds...In general, they bear a close resemblance to each other; thirty of them contain extravagant compliments to the immortal Wellington and the indefatigable Whitbread...The Editor here begs leave to advance a few words in behalf of that useful and much abused bird the Phoenix...Not less than sixty-nine of the competitors have invoked the aid of this native of Arab ia; but as, from their manner of using him after they had caught him, he does not by any means apear to have been a native of Arabia Felix..."
Price: $60.00