Lamentable Tales, Merry Gestes and Pleasant Histories

Chapbook Stories from the Eighteenth Century

Storytelling with Dave Tonge

Sunday 12 July

12pm - 4pm

Free with admission. All welcome!

Join storyteller and historian Dave Tonge and hear the tales that filled Johnson’s London, from ballads and chapbooks to legends shared in coffee houses and market places.

In his Dictionary of the English Language, Dr Samuel Johnson defines a story as ‘A petty fiction’, and ‘An idle, or trifling tale’. But whatever the definition there was an explosion of stories finding their way into print in his life time.

While some printers were producing learned works like Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, many a back street press was knocking out broadside ballads, almanacs, chapbooks and other crudely produced cheap print.

Reworking's of much older tales like Jack the Giant Killer, Aesops Fables and all new versions of the Merry Gestes of Robin Hood, to tales focused on England’s capital city. Stories like A Pleasant History of Taffy’s Progress to London and The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. Stories that were popular among polite society and the common folk alike, and shared in the coffee houses, market places, the back street alehouses, and wherever 18th-century people gathered together.

Dave Tonge is a storyteller and historian. He is the author of three books, Tudor Folk Tales, Norfolk Folk Tales for Children, and Medieval Tales for Children which is a fusion of medieval folktales and horrible history style anecdotes. He has been storytelling for 25 years and conducted sessions for the Ashmolean and British Museum, as well as for English Heritage, National Trust and the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust.

Book online, or just come along.

Destination City

Our Sunday openings are possible thanks to a generous grant from the Destination City Partnership Fund.

Accessibility

There is regrettably no step-free access to Dr Johnson's House.

There are seven steps to access the entrance (with a handrail).

The building is a four-storey townhouse with a staircase between each floor.

There are handrails on each side of the staircase and visitor seating in every room.

Toilets are located down a steep set of stairs.