Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 207

Price Realized: $ 438
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(MORMONS.) Programme for an English performance of "Artemus Ward among the Mormons." 4 pages, 7 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches; cropped, tipped to a scrapbook sheet of similar size, along with a fragment of a Mormon handbill, 2 x 5 inches; on the same sheet are drawn or affixed 12 unrelated caricatures. [London, December 1866]
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Artemus Ward was the stage name of American comedian Charles Farrar Browne (1834-1867), who has been called the "father of standup comedy." A friend and contemporary of Mark Twain, he was best known for his humorous lecture performances rather than his writings. Browne visited Utah shortly after the Civil War, wrote a book on his experiences, and then toured the world sharing amusing stories from it. As he had been saved from death by a kind Mormon doctor, he showed some sympathy for his subject, but his main goal was to get laughs where he could find them.
This playbill advertises a Ward performance of "Among the Mormons" at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. Self-deprecating in tone, it promises that "the panorama used to illustrate Mr. Ward's narrative is rather worse than panoramas usually are", and suggests that all coat-check money be entrusted with Ward to "invest it in America." His act is described in 22 parts, several of them poking fun at polygamy ("The Mormon's religion is singular, and his wives are plural").
Laid down on the same scrapbook leaf is a handbill which was "presented to those leaving A.W.'s lecture, at the door of Egyptian Hall": "The Mormons! If you wish to obtain correct information concerning the doctrines of the Latter-Day Saints, miscalled 'Mormons,' you are respectfully invited to attend their Meetings. . ." Only one other copy of the program has been traced, at the Bodleian.