Percival Leigh’s The Comic English Grammar (1840) is a gleeful send-up of the dry textbook grammars of the day. Every rule of English is illustrated with deliberately absurd, punning, or wildly comic examples, transforming the tedium of parsing into a cabinet of Victorian jokes and wordplay that still land with pleasing regularity more than a century and a half later.
Originally published alongside John Leech’s illustrations in the orbit of Punch, it remains a charming and genuinely funny curiosity for anyone with an interest in Victorian humour. Download this free EPUB for a grammar lesson you will actually want to finish.