The Ingoldsby Legends, First Series by Richard Barham (1840)

I think this strange conglomeration of prose and poetry was first featured individually in Bentley's Miscellany in the late 1830s. They purport, quite lazily, to be snippets of family history saved by the Ingoldsbys at their manor, Tappington (pronounced Tapton, of course) Everard in Kent. I say lazily because none but a fool would think them other than satire. Their intent is to entertain, with stories in verse and prose of vengeful ghosts, foul murder plots, family feuds and mayhem in a welter of different historical periods in Britain, all involving some member or another of the fictitious Ingoldsby family. And of course one of the threads joining them is humour, often scabrous and wild, Barham's specialty. There is an odd point at play here where we are in the twenty-first century: Barham's family actually owned a tiny little old manor called Tappington Hall near Denton in Kent, which seemingly now markets itself as the original of Tappington Everard in these pieces. But it's pretty clear from Barham's descriptions that he intended a much grander sort of house - and there is one very close by, Broome Park. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. This first series of roistering, much more eighteenth century-feeling pieces than nineteenth, was followed by another in 1843 and Barham's death in 1845. Then a third series was cobbled together and published in 1847. They continued to be extraordinarily successful throughout the rest of the century, only to subside into near nothingness in the following, and on into ours. Not a lot else to say. Some are joyful and splendidly silly, some just miss the mark. And on the whole I prefer his two prior sustained narrative efforts, the pseudonymous Baldwin, and the cracking Some Account of My Cousin Nicholas, but, overall, no complaints.