The American Joe Miller: A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humor — Inside the Classic

The Compiler's Framework

Kempt's preface positions the book as a corrective to the absence of a dedicated American jest-book in England. He compares his work to Dean Ramsay's Scottish Reminiscences and Mark Lemon's English collections, asserting that American wit is 'essentially outré.' This framing is significant because it reveals the collection's intended audience: British readers curious about 'Brother Jonathan's' humor. The preface also offers a taxonomy of national humors—English intellectual, Scottish quaint, Irish hearty—but the excerpts themselves often blur these lines. For instance, joke #352 has a Yankee claiming Adam and Eve were 'Yankees, by thunder!'—a punchline that relies on the same kind of ethnic one-upmanship found in British or Irish jest-books.

Verbal Play and Political Satire

Many entries turn on wordplay or the literal interpretation of idioms. Joke #354 has a broker asked his father's age and replying in stock-market terms: 'he is quoted at eighty, but there is every prospect he will reach par.' Joke #356 is a tour de force of acronymic satire, listing over twenty expansions of 'U. S.'—from 'Unconditional Surrender Grant' to 'Unabridged Seizure Grant'—all aimed at General Grant. This entry, drawn from the New York Herald, shows how the collection blends political commentary with the jest-book format. The Civil War appears in several jokes, such as #355, where Arkansas is the unwanted territory that prolongs the war, and #358, where a typographical error turns 'trains' into 'brains' in a general's report.

Recurring Characters and Situations

The excerpts reveal stock figures: the boastful Yankee, the henpecked husband, the literal-minded broker, and the pompous official. Joke #353 features a man who claims he is 'used to' boiler explosions because his wife has blown him up so often. Joke #357 has a man pleading that being a fool is 'a dreadful pull back to a man.' The collection also includes historical figures like William Penn and Thomas Story (#359), though the excerpt cuts off before the punchline. These recurring types suggest that Kempt organized his material by character or theme, though the full text would need to be consulted to confirm the arrangement. The jokes are short, rarely exceeding a paragraph, and rely on a single punchline—a structure that makes the collection easy to dip into.

Readers should approach The American Joe Miller as a period artifact rather than a timeless humor anthology. The jokes are uneven—some still land, others require historical footnotes. Pay attention to the sources Kempt credits (newspapers, anecdotes, other jest-books) and the way he frames American humor for a British audience. The collection offers a useful snapshot of mid-19th-century American comic sensibilities, especially the fondness for hyperbole and wordplay, but its value lies more in what it reveals about cultural stereotypes and publishing trends than in consistent laugh-out-loud comedy.

Somewhere between the numbered jests of Kempt’s collection and the quieter, stranger corners of humor, there’s a warmth I keep coming back to—the way a joke can hold a whole era’s voice. That same fondness lingers in The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon, and other humorous tales — A Closer Reading, where the laughter feels less like a punchline and more like an old friend sighing.