THE LAUGHING WILLOW

Published in the last year of the Great War, this is not the gentle book its title promises.

Roughly its first third is war satire aimed squarely at the German Emperor and his son. Kaiser Wilhelm II is interrogated by the Crown Prince to the tune of Lewis Carroll. A parody of the Rubaiyat stars Billi Kaisam, Surnamed the Tentbreaker. And the Crown Prince’s celebrated coolness under fire turns out to be a cigar, smoked safely behind the lines.

Oliver Herford does not write hatred. He writes contempt, which is a different weapon and a crueler one. His method is to deny these men their scale: an enemy you fear is dangerous, but an enemy who balances his crown on the end of his nose is finished.

Around the war verse sits the rest of a working humorist’s year. Epitaphs. Animal poems. Portraits of J. M. Barrie and Mark Twain. And a Devil who opens a Manhattan dress shop to teach fashionable women how to defraud the customs service.

Herford wrote the verse and drew every picture. This Carrier Press Annotated and Illustrated Edition restores the complete 1918 text with his original drawings, and adds:

• An original Introduction on wit turned against a world war
• Notes on the Text recovering the wartime references that have gone dark
• A Reader’s Guide for book groups and classrooms

Note: this is a book of adult light verse and topical satire. It is not a children’s book.