ABSTRACT
Wordsworth’s Peter Bell was published in April 1819, to be greeted by ‘a chorus both of unfavourable reviews and of ridicule and burlesque’. 1 Quickest off the mark, indeed achieving the notable feats of parodying a work without sight of its nominal model and publishing his poem before its ‘original’ had appeared, was John Hamilton Reynolds:
Wordsworth is going to publish a Poem called Peter Bell – what a perverse fellow it is! Why wilt he talk about Peter Bells – I was told not to tell – but to you it will not be tellings – Reynolds hearing that said Peter Bell was coming out, took it into his head to write a skit upon it call’d Peter Bell. He did it as soon as thought on it is to be published this morning, and comes out before the real Peter Bell, with this admirable motto from the ‘Bold stroke for a Wife’ ‘I am the real Simon Pure’. 2
