Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures

Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857) was the son of an actor-manager. After some time in the Navy and as an apprentice printer he became a playwright and later a journalist. He was a contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens. As a journalist he worked for Punch magazine in which Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures were serialised, to be published in book form in 1846. Job Caudle, the 'hero' of the book is a Victorian shopkeeper whose wife finds she can only talk to him without interruption in bed. Caudle, who outlives his wife, finds he can no longer sleep easily because of his memory of these 'lect