The Carpet-Bag

The Carpet-Bag was a Boston humor weekly published from 1851 to 1853, edited by Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber — creator of “Mrs. Partington,” the genial malaprop who was antebellum America’s best-loved comic character. For a few years it was one of the liveliest comic papers in the country, mixing burlesque, tall tales, woodcut caricature and light verse. Its lasting claim is a matter of record: on May 1, 1852 it ran “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter,” signed “S.L.C.” — the first sketch by a teenaged Samuel Clemens to reach a national audience, years before he became Mark Twain. Charles Farrar Browne, later famous as Artemus Ward, also wrote for its pages. This is the run we have recovered and restored from the Villanova University Digital Library — public domain, digitally cleaned and labeled at comicbooks.com.