Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi
Encyclopedia
Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi is the autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 of the nineteenth-century clown
Clown
Clowns are comic performers stereotypically characterized by the grotesque image of the circus clown's colored wigs, stylistic makeup, outlandish costumes, unusually large footwear, and red nose, which evolved to project their actions to large audiences. Other less grotesque styles have also...

 Joseph Grimaldi
Joseph Grimaldi
Joseph Grimaldi , was an English actor and comedian who is perhaps best known for his invention of the modern day whiteface clown. He chiefly appeared at Drury Lane in pantomime where his greatest success was appearing in Harlequin and Mother Goose; or the Golden Egg and followed with a successful...

.

Provenance

The book's accuracy is not entirely clear, since it went through a number of revisions, not all with Grimaldi's input. Grimaldi's original manuscript, which he mostly dictated, was about 400 pages; he completed it in December 1836. The original "excessively voluminous" version was apparently not good enough for publication, and in early 1837 he signed a contract with a collaborator, the obscure Grub Street
Grub Street
Until the early 19th century, Grub Street was a street close to London's impoverished Moorfields district that ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate north to Chiswell Street...

 writer Thomas Egerton Wilks, to "rewrite, revise, and correct" the manuscript. However, two months after signing the contract, Grimaldi died, and Wilks finished the job on his own, not only cutting and condensing the original but introducing extra material based on his conversations with Grimaldi. Wilks made no indication which parts of his production were actually written by Grimaldi and which parts were original to Wilks. He also chose to change Grimaldi's first-person narration to the third person.

In September 1837, Wilks offered the Memoirs to Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge....

, publisher of the magazine Bentley's Miscellany
Bentley's Miscellany
Bentley's Miscellany was an English literary magazine started by Richard Bentley. It was published between 1836 and 1868.-Contributors:Already a successful publisher of novels, Bentley began the journal in 1836 and invited Charles Dickens to be its first editor...

. Bentley bought it, after securing the copyright from Grimaldi's estate, but he thought it was still too long and also badly edited, so he asked one of his favorite young writers, the novelist Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, then twenty-five years old, to re-edit and re-write it. At first Dickens was not inclined to take the job, and he wrote to Bentley in October 1837:

"I have thought the matter over, and looked it over, too. It is very badly done, and is so redolent of twaddle that I fear I cannot take it up on any conditions to which you would be disposed to accede. I should require to be assured three hundred pounds in the first instance without any reference to the sale -- and as I should be bound to stipulate in addition that the book should not be published in numbers I think it would scarcely serve your purpose."


However, Bentley agreed to Dickens' terms (a guarantee of three hundred pounds and an agreement to publish the book all at once, and not in monthly numbers.) Dickens signed a contract in November 1837, and completed the job in January 1838, mostly by dictation. Dickens seems never to have seen Grimaldi's original manuscript (which remained in the hands of the executor), but only worked from Wilks' version, which he heavily edited and re-wrote. Bentley published it in two octavo
Octavo
Octavo to is a technical term describing the format of a book.Octavo may also refer to:* Octavo is a grimoire in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett...

 volumes in February 1838.

How faithful this twice-edited, twice-rewritten version is to the original cannot now be determined, since the original manuscript was sold at an estate sale in 1874 and has never been seen since.

Online Texts

  • Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi at Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

    .
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