[English as She Is Spoke] The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English in Two Parts

Twain, Mark (introduction); Carolino, Pedro

Published by James R. Osgood and Company, Boston, 1883

Fonseca and Carolino?s inadvertent masterpiece has been called many things. "Perhaps the worst foreign phrasebook ever written" . A book of "miraculous stupidities." "The most ludicrous foreign attempt ever made to teach our language." Most often under the title English as She Is Spoke.the mid-nineteenth-century Portuguese phrasebook has become a minor classic. Yet it is not as a book of instruction intended for those Portuguese who would learn English that it has survived?nay thrived?for the last century and a half, but rather it is as a work of accidental comedy and unintended humor."?George Monteiro. The New Guide to Conversation began as an 1836 French-Portuguese phrasebook by José da Fonseca; in 1855, Pedro Carolino, with only a limited grasp of English, translated the French text to make an English-Portuguese phrase book. In succeeding years, excerpts made the rounds of English-language magazines until in 1883, a London publisher reprinted the book under the title, English As She Is Spoke, and within a year, six editions appeared (the book was not protected by copyright). This is apparently the first American edition (published in mid-1883), and the first edition with an introduction by Mark Twain. For more information, see BAL 3412 and George Monteiro, English as She Is Spoke: 150 Years of a Classic, Luso-Brazilian Review, Volume 41, Number 1, 2004. First American edition and first edition with the Twain preface (first printing). A very good copy in somewhat scuffed thin cloth-covered boards; the cloth is beginning to fray at the top of the spine (there was also a simultaneous paperback version). Uncommon. Seller Inventory # 362701

Bibliographic Details

Title: [English as She Is Spoke] The New Guide of ...
Publisher: James R. Osgood and Company, Boston
Publication Date: 1883
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very good
Edition: First US edition.