LONDON: EVELEIGH NASH,
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
"PUNCH"
A Great Punch Editor
By George Somes Layard
In 1 vol., demy 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 18s. net.
With Eight Full-page Illustrations and twenty-two Initial
Letters from Punch.
A Memoir of Shirley Brooks, the second in succession of
Punch Editors.
"Shirley's pen is the gracefullest in London" was the verdict of Mark Lemon, the famous first Editor of Punch. For twenty years Shirley Brooks was Mark Lemon's right-hand man, and indeed, for the greater part of that period, was the guiding power. In 1870 he was unhesitatingly promoted to the editor's chair. In the present volume the subject of the memoir is presented to the reader in aspects corresponding to Shirley Brooks's many-sided character. Of Mr. Layard, the writer of this Biography, whose "Life of Charles Keene" will be remembered as a brilliant study of the greatest of Punch artists, only this need be said, that he possesses the knowledge of a specialist in humorous and satirical literature, and has here presented Shirley Brooks, first in his public capacity as journalist and editor, and then as the humorous large-hearted man of the world, whom those who knew him best held, and hold, in tenderest memory. The series of initial letters from Punch's "Essence of Parliament" are an especially happy feature in a book which has the exceptional merit of being the first full-dress biography of one of Punch's five famous editors.
Recollections of a Humourist