Dagonet Ditties (Annotated)

George R. Sims's Dagonet Ditties is a collection of comic and topical verse written in the accessible voice of "Dagonet," Sims's best-known journalistic persona. Its poems transform the incidents, grievances, and amusements of late-Victorian urban life into brisk narratives shaped by rhyme, colloquial diction, parody, and punch-line wit. Beneath the apparent lightness lies a record of popular cult...