The Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham

Product Information

For inexhaustible fun that never gets flat and scarcely ever simply uproarious, for a facility and felicity in rhyme and rhythm which is almost miraculous, and for a blending of the grotesque and the terrible . no one competent to judge and enjoy will ever go to Barham in vain." - George Saintsbury, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature

So Sir Robert dashed to his stables and had his favourite steed Grey Dolphin saddled up. The horse had been specially trained for swimming out to sea. The Ingoldsby Legends (full title: The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels) is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poems written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham. Ngaio Marsh refers to The Ingoldsby Legends in Death in a White Tie. Troy tells about coming across Lord Tomnoddy and the hanging and the "extraordinary impression" it had on her. She also makes references in Surfeit of Lampreys, the second time (Chapter 19 Part 4) with reference to The Hand of Glory. She also makes brief mention of the work in Death and the Dancing Footman. But he realised he would still need a royal pardon. King Edward l (1272 to 1307) was to sail past Sheppey on his royal barge to inspect his navy moored at The Nore which was preparing to go into battle against the French. Barham was a political Tory, yet a lifelong friend of the liberal Sydney Smith and of Theodore Hook. Barham, a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, the Literary Gazette and John Gorton's Biographical Dictionary, also wrote a novel, My Cousin Nicholas (1834). He died in London on 17 June 1845, after a long and painful illness.In those days Sheppey was covered in woods and was an ideal hunting ground. Indeed, Henry Vlll is recorded as staying at Shurland Hall with Anne Boleyn. His father, also called Richard Harris, was a magistrate and known to have been rather rotund, reputedly over 20 stones. Nevertheless, he managed a relationship with his housekeeper and the outcome was Richard Junior." Lord Rokebury refused to pay Richard's debts but magnanimously gave him the money for him to pay the debts off himself. This act of generosity made a big impression on Richard and made him tone down his wild student lifestyle."

That Admiral, Lady, and Hairy-faced man May say what they please, and may do what they can; But one thing seems remarkably clear,— They may die to-morrow, or live till next year,— But wherever they live, or whenever they die, They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe! In 1813 after a bad bout of illness, coupled with the death of his mother, Richard made up his mind to totally re-evaluate his life and as a result gave up law and turned to the ministry. He was ordained in 1817 and became the curate of Warehorne on Romney Marsh.One day on his travels he had an accident and broke his leg. So, to cope with the boredom of inactivity, he turned his mind to writing.

Richard Harris Barham (6 December 1788 – 17 June 1845) was an English cleric of the Church of England, a novelist and a humorous poet. He was known generally by his pseudonym Thomas Ingoldsby and as the author of The Ingoldsby Legends. She suggested he begin by putting Kent's own stories and folklore to paper. She seemed to have a good influence on authors - she was grandmother of Thomas Hughes who went on to write Tom Brown's School Days. It has been said that the oldest documented usage of the phrase "two shakes of a lamb's tail" can be found within this compilation. Evidences are found within the stories The Babes In The Wood; Or, The Norfolk Tragedy, A Row In An Omnibus (Box): A Legend Of The Haymarket, and The Lay Of St Aloys: A Legend Of Blois.The collection also contains one of the earliest transcriptions of the song " A Franklyn's Dogge", an early version of the song " Bingo".

McGivering, John (2008). " "The Dog Hervey" Notes on the text". Readers' Guide. The Kipling Society . Retrieved 6 August 2019. The Rev. Richard Harris Barham was a great creator of nonsense, and he had a prodigious faculty for versifying. He wrote entirely for his own amusement; or, as a friend said of him: 'The same relaxation which some men seek in music, pictures, cards, or newspapers, he sought in verse.' Most of his rhymes were written down at odd moments, often after midnight, and with a facility, his son tells us,' which not only surprised himself, but which he actually viewed with distrust ; and he would not unfrequently lay down his pen, from an apprehension that what was so fluent must of necessity be feeble.' In all this helter-skelter of ' mirth and marvels,' begun for Bentley's 'Miscellany' in 1837, when he was nearly fifty years of age, there is nothing feeble in all the fluency. No verse that has been written in English goes so fast or turns so many somersaults on the way. He said once, of a poem which he did not care for,' that the only chance to make it effective was to strike out something newish in the stanza, to make people stare.' If that was ever his aim, he attained it, and not in his rhymes only. The rhymes are marvellous, and if they are not the strictest, have the most spontaneous sound of any in English. The clatter of ' atmosphere' and ' that must fear,' In Sarah Grand's 1897 novel The Beth Book, the narrator and main character, Beth, mentions the Ingoldsby Legends as a favourite of her childhood, and recites a passage from "The Execution" that appears in the collection.Harris, Oliver D. (2023). " "Grey Dolphin" and the Horse Church, Minster in Sheppey: the construction of a legend". Archaeologia Cantiana. 144: 97–123. In the growth of English short fiction Barham's work looms larger yet. Many a good story and tale are scattered through the corpus of English fiction prior to the 1830s, but it is not, I think, an exaggeration to claim Barham as the first consistent English writer of the true short story." - Wendall V. Harris, British Short Fiction in the Nineteenth Century This weird tale appears to be based, at least part, on fact. The knight Sir Robert De Shurland certainly lived in Shurland Hall, which still stands just outside the village of Eastchurch today.