Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi

This reprinted edition of the 'Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi' edited by 'Boz' (Charles Dickens) was published in 1882-1883, the first edition having appeared in 1838 a year after the clown's death. The book includes Includes twelve etchings by George Cruikshank and a portrait of Joseph Grimaldi. The paper cover depicts a colour version of 'Live Properties'. Joseph Grimaldi was the most celebrated clown of the late 18th early 19th century and credited with being the founding father of the pantomime. As a huge admirer of Grimaldi, Charles Dickens was an obvious candidate to edit the clown's memoirs. In his introduction Dickens describes the ill health that befell the clown as a result of his desire to please his audience. Whilst noting that Grimaldi’s ‘attention to his duties and invariable punctuality were always remarkable’ the ‘immense fatigue’ induced by over-work ‘sowed the first seeds of that extreme debility and utter prostration of strength from which, in the latter years of his life, he suffered so much’. Ironically such words, although written by Dickens when he was only 27 years, mirrored the author’s own relentless attitude to work.

Following the publication in 1838 Dickens was stung by a reviewer's comment 'We should almost venture the belief that Mr Dickens had never seen Grimaldi on the stage'. In response Dickens drafted a letter, never sent in which he protested he had indeed, as a child, seen Grimaldi perform but that, in any case 'I never heard it established as a sound position before, that to write a biography of a man...it is essential that you should have known him.'

Several years later Dickens claimed that the Memoirs were published 'chiefly to please' the illustrator Cruikshank. Although not particularly proud of his own contribution Dickens acknowledged that 'the good right hand of George Cruikshank had seldom been better exercised' than in his illustrations of Joseph Grimaldi.