Prenticeanna is a collection of commentaries and quotes published by George Dennison Prentice in 1860. These quotes were originally published by the author in the "Louisville Journal" and the "New York Ledger" over the preceeding 29 years. As noted by the author in 1860, many of these quotes may seem inappropriate or out of context today (in 1860), and some seem even more so today (+140 years later), but they do provide an interesting insight into days gone by.
There are over 1800 entries in this book of 306 pages, so far only a handful have been transcribed and entered into the online database. We will do our best to transcribe more as time permits.
Below is the text of the preface from this book.
PRENTICEANNA;
or
WIT AND HUMOR IN PARAGRAPHS
by
The Editor of the Louisville Journal
New York
Derby & Jackson, 119 Nassau Street.
1860.
PREFACE.
Though I have been a public writer from my boy-hood, I offer this volume to my fellow-citizens with a diffidence almost painful. It is made up of a portion of the paragraphs that I have written for the "Louisville Journal" during the last twenty-nine years, and a few of those written for the "New York Ledger" within the last two years.
A long time ago, I was urged often and earnestly to publish such a volume as this, or permit one to be published, but I uniformly declined. I should decline still, but for the knowledge that, if I do not publish my own paragraphs, others will, making the selections with far less regard for the feelings of men who are now my friends than I choose to exercise.
I am as well aware as any one can be, that there are just grounds of grave objection to this book. Probably, in many things that it contains, little else than partisan bitterness will be found. Still I have carefully excluded, out of deference to the sensibilities of persons whom I now esteem and love, thousands of the very passages which, at the time of their appearance, did most to give to the "Louisville Journal" its fame or its notoriety. In many of the passages here given, I have suppressed names in order that there may be no occasion for offence.
In regard to my contemporaries of the Press, who are referred to, I will say, in justice both to myself and to them, that not more than half of the blows struck between them and me were mine. I do not think that I have now a feeling of personal enmity toward any member the Press.
Many, and perhaps most, of the paragraphs here collected relate to the men and measures of former times, but I believe they all explain themselves. I have no doubt, however, that a very considerable proportion of them, which, perhaps from partisan partiality, were deemed "good hits" at the time, will, now that the occasion which called them forth has passed, be read with comparatively little interest. I know that such things do not keep well.
It is of course impossible for me to remember how far I may, in some trifles, have been indebted to suggestions that I found in the writings of others, but I believe that all which I have here given is my own. Not a few of the paragraphs have been keeping their place in the newspaper Press for many years, no one seeming to have any knowledge of their origin, and very likely they are not worth my reclaiming.
The reader will see that, occasionally, to express a thought, or a fancy, or a conceit more conveniently, I have put the words into the form of a dialogue, purporting sometimes to be between two politicians, sometimes a man and his wife, etc., but such paragraphs are not less original, not less my own, than the rest.
The Publishers are responsible for the title of this book.
G. D. PRENTICE.
