The Wit and Humor of America gathers ten volumes of American comic writing into a capacious archive of satire, burlesque, dialect sketch, parable, anecdote, verse, and social observation. Moving from early republican wit through nineteenth-century regionalism and the modern magazine sketch, it reveals humor as both entertainment and cultural criticism. Comic monologues, mock-heroic poems, and sharply observed tales sit beside enduring reflections on politics, manners, sentiment, class, and...