In The C. O. Jones Compendium of Practical Jokes(1982) Richard Boston narrates some entertaining anecdotes concerning the humorist Max Beerbohm. Most of those involving the ‘ alteration ‘ of books remind us of the hilarious alterations made in the ‘50s and 60s by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell on books borrowed from Islington Public Library, where they are still displayed. It is possible that the two men got their idea from Beerbohm.
One joke, according to Boston, was played on ‘a volume of exceptionally solemn poems by a dullard called Herbert Trench ‘. Boston doesn’t identify the collection, but since it contained a ‘ romantic dialogue between Apollo and a mariner ‘ it was definitely Apollo and the Seaman(1908).This is what Beerbohm did.
‘With a sharp knife and painstaking care Max scraped out the aspirates at the beginning of every word beginning with ‘h’ spoken by the mariner, and substituted an apostrophe. The result was that a speech intended to be of a classical dignity was turned into straight Cockney. Max then sent the book to the author, commenting that he had notpreviously come across this edition of the book.
The work had been done so carefully that it appeared to be perfectly genuine. At first Trench was horrified. When he tumbled, he was offended. Max made it up by explaining to Trench that he considered him to be a true poet —-‘Otherwise there wouldn’t be any fun in making fun of you’.
Some lines altered by Beerbohm may have appeared thus:
Apollo: “ And whence did that craft hail, sailor,
Of which you seem so fond ?”
Seaman: “ It was some ‘ arbour of the East
Back o‘ beyond, back o’ beyond. Continue reading
In an earlier Jot we selected at random some pretty witty items from an Edwardian comic’s gag book composed of clippings from newspapers and magazines. Here are some more. Astonishingly, most sound so very modern in their style of humour. None of them contain puns.
Found at Jot HQ the other day a small scrapbook containing pasted in humorous cuttings from magazines and newspapers that once belonged to the late prankster Jeremy Beadle (1948 – 2008). The date 1897 on the cover was very likely the year in which the compilation was begun, since many of the jokes and anecdotes are clearly of a later date. The high quality of much of the material strongly suggests that the compiler may have been a comedian of some sophistication who was prepared to devote a long period in search of the best gags.
This is a paperback published in California and written by two American stand up comedians, John Carfi and Cliff Carle, of ‘ funny ‘ messages that could be left on answering machines. It appeared in 1983, which means that quite a few of the jokes might not be acceptable in the more PC climate of 2018.
Found – a rather battered copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s early book The Daffodil Murderer (1913) published under the pseudonym ‘Saul Kain.’ In decent condition it has auction records like this from Bloomsbury Book Auctions in April 2009:
Found- in a copy of Nip in the Air (John Murray 1974) a book of poems by John Betjeman this affectionate parody by the esteemed travel writer Patrick (‘Paddy’) Leigh Fermor. It is probably from a magazine (pp 379-380), possibly The London Magazine but is not archived anywhere online. It is probably from the 1970s. It deserves a place in a completist Betjeman collection and in any future collection of 
