Product Description

First published in 1924, "Augustus Carp Esq." is a spoof autobiography: a deadpan comic account of a climb to the heights of mediocrity by a humorless, pious oaf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #524857 in Books
• Published on: 1988-02-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Anglophiles and connoisseurs of dry humor would be well advised to acquaint themselves with the Prion Humour Classic Series. Its unmatchable lineup boasting editions of Benson's Mapp and Lucia and Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody has now been extended to include a reissue of Augustus Carp Esq. by Himself, by Sir Henry Howarth Bashford. This apocryphal autobiography of a painfully pious, self-satisfied English landowner is perhaps less accessible than other volumes in the series, but the droll inanities of its protagonist easily pass muster.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Bashford's comic 1924 volume offers the mock autobiography of Augustus Carp, a self-aggrandizing, stuffy, puritanical oaf, who indulges in numerous vices in the name of Christianity, rationalizing his own weaknesses while condemning others for the same acts. Great fun.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A sublime, ferocious farce." -- THE NEW YORKER

"[Bashford's] language and characters remind you of Pale Fire or that other remarkable one-shot, A Confederacy of Dunces." -- Kirkus Reviews

Customer Reviews

A lost classic
I first became aware of this lost classic through Frank Muir's anthology of comic prose. I was lucky enough to find a copy in my local library and, following several hysteria-plagued re-readings, I decided to buy a second-hand copy. This book inspires devotees. I enquired after many newly advertised second-hand copies of the book online, only to be told by dealers that the book had been sold immediately on being placed online, and that, moreover, I was the sixth or seventh person to have asked after it. (I did manage to snare a copy eventually.) So Prion is doing the reading public a great service in rescuing the book from its undeserved out-of-print limbo. Augustus Carp is an anti-hero who can easily stand comparison with Waugh's greatest snobs, and as a bore and a prig he could almost have sprung from the mind of Patrick Hamilton (another neglected genius). Anyone who has ever felt that the Church is rather too keen to deny basic pleasures will find the book's feverish satire a tonic; loathers of hypocrisy will put it by their bedside tables; those who love to laugh will buy four or five copies for friends. It's that good.

caution... this book ellicits laughter, even in public
I have never been guilty of laughing out loud when reading a book, until now. Augustus Carp is simply irresistible, and the more supercilious and flawed his character is shown to be (through his own writings!), the funnier it gets; though not unaccompanied by a certain nervous introspection... after all, who among us is without some self-deluded failings? So it is humor (humour) with an edge, as is characteristic of all the best British humor. Like a good martini, it is dry and leaves you stirred, and perhaps chuckling a little helplessly...

Snobs to the fore
This is the end of the Victorian age and the nineteenth century. Augustus Carp tells us about his life as a young man, brought up in a middle-class family. A nattering nabob, a supreme snob, an obnoxious boor, and a prig given to hourly flatulence. He spends his time correcting others to the point of suing them, while he himself is always right and, of course, superior to any human being. He keeps his mother as a slave and destroys those around him. Can the comeuppance be lurking in the future?

Find out by reading this very, very funny book. This is a fabulous satire of a morally uptight generation,