Charles Dickens - Jozef Grimaldi - 1870

"Jozef Grimaldi" by Charles Dickens - H.A.M. Roelants, Schiedam - ca 1870 first thus Dutch edition - 2 parts bound in one - 15cmx13cm - translated into dutch by C.M. Mensing - condition: very good, in original publisher's binding, with two frontispieces present.

First thus Dutch edition of "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi"

After Grimaldi's death, Charles Dickens was invited by Richard Bentley to edit and improve Thomas Egerton Wilks's clumsily written life of Grimaldi, which had been based on the clown's own notes, which Dickens did under his regular nom de plume, "Boz". As a child, Dickens saw Grimaldi perform at the Star Theatre, Rochester, in 1820.[181] The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, illustrated by George Cruikshank, sold well, to Dickens's surprise.[182][n 19]

Grimaldi's fame was established primarily by his numerous successes as Clown in pantomimes. His Clown satirised many aspects of contemporary British life, and made comic mockery of absurdities in fashion. Grimaldi quickly became the most famous Clown in London, gradually transforming the Clown character from a pratfalling country bumpkin into the most important character in the harlequinade, more important even than Harlequin. He expanded the role of Clown to include a range of comic impersonations, from the rival suitor, to household cook or nurse. Grimaldi's popularity changed the balance of the evening's entertainment, so that the first, relatively serious, section of the pantomime soon dwindled to "little more than a pretext for determining the characters who were to be transformed into those of the harlequinade." He became so dominant in the harlequinade that later Clowns were known as "Joey", and the term, as well as his make-up design, were later generalised to other types of clowns.[1][107] Literary critic John Carey wrote: "He invented clown make-up as we know it today (the wide grin was designed to be visible from the back of Drury Lane's auditorium, the biggest in Europe). He also created the stereotype of the "sad clown", taken up by later funsters including Charlie Chaplin and Peter Sellers."[184]

A contributor to Bentley's Miscellany wrote in 1846: "To those who never saw him, description is fruitless; to those who have, no praise comes up to their appreciation of him. We therefore shake our heads and say 'Ah! You should have seen Grimaldi!'"[185] Another writer commented that his performances elevated his role by "acute observation upon the foibles and absurdities of society. ... He is the finest practical satyrist that ever existed. ... He was so extravagantly natural, that [no one was] ashamed to laugh till tears coursed down their cheeks at Joe and his comicalities."[186] The British dramatist James Planché worried, in a rhymed couplet, that Grimaldi's death meant the end of a genre: "Pantomime's best days are fled; Grimaldi, Barnes, Bologna dead!"[187]

Grimaldi became "easily the most popular English entertainer of his day".[2] The Victoria and Albert Museum and the actor Simon Callow have both concluded that no other Clown achieved Grimaldi's level of fame.[66][188] Richard Findlater, author of a 1955 Grimaldi biography, commented: "Here is Joey the Clown, the first of 10,000 Joeys who took their name from him; here is the genius of English fun, in the holiday splendour of his reign at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden ... during his lifetime [Grimaldi] was generally acclaimed as the funniest and best-loved man in the British theatre."[189] A later biographer, Andrew McConnell Stott, wrote that "Joey had been the first great experiment in comic persona, and by shifting the emphasis of clowning from tricks and pratfalls to characterisation, satire and a full sense of personhood, he had established himself as the spiritual father of all those later comedians whose humour stems first and foremost from a strong sense of identity.