Tricks of the trade

Tricks of the trade by Sir John Collings Squire is a collection of literary parodies and satirical pastiches written in the early 20th century. The book playfully imitates famous writers and reimagines well-known works in alien voices, with a sharp focus on exposing the tics, habits, and mannerisms that make styles instantly recognizable.

The collection divides into two parts. “How They Do It” caricatures living and recent figures: rollicking Sussex-and-beer verse for Belloc, naïve nature-simplicity for Davies, brassbound naval patriotism for Newbolt, gritty melodrama and murder in Masefield’s street-ballad mode, paradox and apocalypse for Chesterton, Celtic “twilight” wistfulness, manufactured folk-songs, a breathless confessional-politico narrative for Wells, and a Shavian playlet where a dramatist barges in on Mahomet. “How They Would Have Done It” recasts classics in borrowed voices: Wordsworth turning The Everlasting Mercy into sober moral narrative; Swinburne’s torrent surging through The Lay of Horatius; Masefield roughening Casabianca; an all-purpose Elizabethan inflating “She Dwelt”; Pope and Gray refitting Tennyson and Spoon River; a “very new” minimalist doing The Lotus-Eaters; Henry James labyrinthizing the Church Catechism; Byron swaggering through The Passing of Arthur; and Tagore spiritualizing “Little Drops of Water.” Throughout, the pieces skewer clichés, rhythms, and favorite themes with witty precision.