Cutchacutchoo, or The Jostling of the Innocents

Dublin: Printed for C. Lewis, [1805], 1805. Stated "Third Edition" on the title-page. See Lowe, English Theatrical Literature, 1809-1828; not in NCBEL. Fine copy.. 12mo, disbound, 43 pages. With half-title. In 1804, Miss Sydney Owenson (1775/6-1859), aspiring Irish novelist, poet and socialite (and later Lady Morgan) became embroiled in pamphlet war that began with the publication of Familiar Epistles on the Present State of the Irish Stage, anonymously published, but attributed to John Wilson Croker. It satirized and questioned the talents of favorite Irish actors and stage managers, of which Sydney Owenson's father, Robert Owenson, was one. Known as "Croker's Epistles," it spawned a host of responses, enlargements and ripostes, including Owenson's A Few Reflections . . . On the Present State of the Irish Stage (1804). In 1805 Cutchacutchoo, or The Jostling of the Innocents appeared. Modeled on "Crocker's Epistles," it aimed its lively and sharp pen at prominent society ladies of Dublin, with invective and sarcasm, and the obvious intent that its readers would assume Croker was its author, as well. Croker, an ambitious young lawyer with important Tory affiliations, denied involvement with either publication, professed outrage and blamed Owenson. In her biography of Croker (1940), Myron Brightfield wrote that Sydney Owenson was the instigator behind Cutchachutchoo, and probably wrote all or part of it "with the deliberate intention of fathering it on Croker." Croker later became editor of the influential Quarterly Review, in which he in turn used his sharp pen to assault then Lady Morgan at every opportunity. OCLC and COPAC record a few copies of the first, second and fourth editions of Cutchacutchoo, but this third edition is not found.