Customer Reviews

Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself (New York Review Books Classics)

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I spent four days reading and enjoying this wonderful novel, and spent another four days reading about it in the pages of Google Books. I found that this unsigned review captures everything I loved about the book. It appeared in the September, 1836 issue of "The Knickerbocker: Or New York Monthly Magazine."

*******

OF all the native productions of the season, commend us to Sheppard Lee. We must however initiate the reader into the proper manner of perusing the work, before adverting more particularly to its qualities. The various 'books' which it contains should be read at short intervals; the volumes should be closed at the termination of each metamorphose of the author, as the curtain falls upon the different scenes of a drama; in this wise, the reader may enjoy in parcels a delicious bundle of all sorts of clever intellectual wares. The writer wins at once upon our regard, by the choice requisites of truth and freshness, and a plain unvarnished delivery of what he has to say. The separate characters which he assumes are each a picture, drawn to the life, and some of them, without doubt, from life. He gives the reins to an exuberant fancy, but is not so profusely inventive as to distract attention or curiosity. His humor is capital, and always naturally displayed, and his satire bites shrewdly, without any appearance of ill nature or malignity, which too often accompany sarcasm.

[The Reviewer then quotes extensively from Sheppard Lee's life as a politician; reviews of the time often contained dozens of pages of the books being reviewed.]

On throwing off his first existence, Lee becomes a rich brewer of Philadelphia: but although he has suddenly risen from poverty to affluence, he is not without his troubles. For example, [and again the book is extensively quoted; this is a small section that gives the modern reader a flavor of the whole book]:

"You see, gentlemen -- (I'll take another glass of that port, Mr. Doolittle) -- you see

what we must all come to! This is one of the small penalties one must pay for being

a gentleman; when one dances, one must pay the piper. Now would my friend Hig-

ginson there give a whole year of his best brewing, that all the pale ale and purple port

that have passed his lips had been nothing better than elder-wine and bonny-clabber.

But never mind, my dear sir,' said the son of AEsculapins, with a coolness that shocked

me; 'as long as it's only in your foot, it's a small matter.'

" 'A small matter !' -- I grinned at him ; but the unfeeling wretch only repeated his

words -- 'A small matter!' "

I had never been sick before in my life. As John H. Higglnson, my worst complaints

had been only an occasional surfeit, or a moderate attack of booziness; and as Shep-

pard Lee, I had never known any disease except laziness, which, being chronic, I had

grown so accustomed to that it never troubled me. But now, ah, now! my first step

into the world of enjoyment was to be made on red-hot ploughshares and pokers; my

first hour of a life of content was to be passed in grinning, and groaning, and -- but it

is hardly worth while to say it. The gout should be confined to religious people ; for

men of the world will swear, and that roundly."

His next transformations are, first into a slave, and then into a master of slaves; both which characters, it is evident close observation has enabled him faithfully to describe. We take leave of this work -- which is American in every thing -- with the single remark, that beside being amusing in a high degree, it is calculated in many respects.

******

And so say I!