The American Joe Miller: A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humor
Philosophy
The American Joe Miller: A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humor
American wit and humor
After Miller's death, John Mottley (1692-1750) brought out
a book called Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wit's Vade-Mecum
(1739), published under the pseudonym of Elijah Jenkins
Esq. at the price of one shilling. This was a collection
of contemporary and ancient coarse witticisms, only three
of which are told of Miller. This first edition was a thin
pamphlet of 247 numbered jokes. This ran to three editions
in its first year.
Owing to the quality of the jokes in Mottley's book, their
number increasing with each of the many subsequent editions,
any time-worn jest came to be called "a Joe Miller", a
Joe-Millerism, or simply a Millerism.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Joe Miller, by Various
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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