Page 7 - English

Editor’s Note

IN 1969, A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER named Amsel Greene
published a book titled Pullet Surprises—a compilation of the errors,
howlers and bloopers he had encountered from his vocabulary
students. This delightful compendium went on to produce a host of
spin-offs and follow-ups.
But Greene was not the first to bring to the public such a
delightful collection of student bloopers. In 1887, Caroline LeRow
brought together a collection of student answers that she and her
colleagues had collected over time. Being somewhat hesitant about
the value of her little book, she sent a copy to Mark Twain to
review—which he did in glowing terms in the April 1887 edition of
Century Magazine.
This is how I discovered the work. Once I read Twain’s
summary of the book, I couldn’t rest until I’d found the original
(which is available for free on Archive.org). And then I couldn’t
resist the temptation to reproduce it for the modern reader—if only to
show that, after 130 years, nothing much has changed!
I’m not the first to reproduce this volume in print-on-demand.
Other versions, however, simply reproduce the badly scanned,
photocopy-quality edition that appears on Archive.org. Since the
original book was printed in a small format, it ran to over 100 pages.
I’ve chosen to reformat the book so that it is more manageable,

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