''Rejected Addresses'' was the title of an 1812 book of

parodies A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...

by the brothers

James James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguati ...

and Horace Smith. In the line of 18th-century pastiches focussed on a single subject in the style of poets of the time, it contained twenty-one good-natured pastiches of contemporary authors. The book's popular success set the fashion for a number of later works of the same kind.

Precursors

Although parody is a long-standing literary genre, the

mock heroic Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature. Typically, mock-heroic works either put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic ...

of Augustan times began to share its territory with parody, using the deflationary inversion of values - comparing small things with great - as a satirical tool in the deconstruction of the epic style. A later humorous tactic, in place of a connected narrative in the mock-epic manner, was to apply poems in the style of varied authors to a single deflationary subject. The ultimate forerunner of this approach has been identified with Isaac Brown's small work, ''A Pipe of Tobacco, in Imitation of Six Several Authors'', first published in 1736. In that case the poets

Colley Cibber Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir ''Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber'' (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling ...

Ambrose Philips Ambrose Philips (167418 June 1749) was an English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of his time, resulting in Henry Carey bestowing the nickname " Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean affected, weak, and maudlin speech or ver ...

, James Thomson,

Edward Young Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for ''Night-Thoughts'', a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements. It was one of the mos ...

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

and

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...

were used as the focus for its series of good-natured parodic variations. The popularity of these was attested by many subsequent editions and by their reproduction in the poetical miscellanies of after decades. A new direction was given to this departure by employing parody as a weapon in the political conflicts of the 1790s. This was particularly identified with the '' Anti-Jacobin'', where the works of poets identified with liberal tendencies were treated with satirical humour. An anthology of such parodies, ''The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin'', followed in 1800 and its popularity guaranteed frequent editions over the following decades. Although the name of their targets are generally not mentioned, a clue is usually given by way of preface or notes, sometimes quoting the opening lines.

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

was a particular victim in early numbers of the weekly, in which his lofty sentiments were downgraded to ridiculous

bathos Bathos ( ;''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1st ed. "bathos, ''n.'' Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1885. grc-gre, , "depth") is a literary term, first used in this sense in Alexander Pope's 1727 essay " Peri Bathous", to describe an ...

. For his "Inscription for the apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Martin the regicide was imprisoned thirty years" was substituted the Newgate Prison cell of a drunken "

Elizabeth Brownrigg Elizabeth Brownrigg (1720 – 14 September 1767) was an 18th-century English murderer. Her victim, Mary Clifford, was one of her domestic servants, who died from cumulative injuries and associated infected wounds. As a result of witness testimon ...

the Prentice-cide" (I). And Southey's humanitarian themes clothed in experimental metres were rewritten as "The friend of humanity and the knife-grinder" (II) and the subversive "The Soldier’s Friend" (V). Later numbers took as their target speculative philosophical and scientific works aiming at popular acceptance by being clothed in verse.

Richard Payne Knight Richard Payne Knight (11 February 1751 – 23 April 1824) of Downton Castle in Herefordshire, and of 5 Soho Square,History of Parliament biography London, England, was a classical scholar, connoisseur, archaeologist and numismatist best ...

’s ''The Progress of Civil Society'' (1796) became the satirical "The Progress of Man" (XV, XVI, XXI). This was later ascribed to the fictitious "Mr Higgins of St Mary Axe", author as well of "The Loves of the Triangles" (XXIII, XXIV, XXVI, a parody of Erasmus Darwin’s verse treatise ''The Loves of the Plants'' (1791) mingled with gallophile propaganda. He also reappears as author of "The Rovers" (XXX – XXXI), an imitation seemingly based on contemporary translations of popular German melodramas.

Rejected Addresses

The widened parodic focus from poetry to drama in the ''Anti-Jacobin'' was taken even further in the ''Rejected Addresses'' of 1812, in which works in prose were made additional targets. The occasion given for its publication was a public competition advertised in the press for an address to be spoken at the reopening of the

Drury Lane Theatre The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drur ...

, which had been destroyed by fire. As none of the actual entries were considered adequate in the end,

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

was commissioned to write one specially. But when the brothers James and Horace Smith heard of the result of the competition, they planned a volume of parodies of writers of the day, to be published as supposed failed entries and issued to coincide with the theatre’s opening.Rejected Addresses at Project Gutenberg
/ref> Titled ''Rejected Addresses: Or, The New Theatrum Poetarum'', the book’s contents were as follows:

References

{{Authority control 1812 books British books Parodies of literature