Helen Haiman Joseph’s *A Book of Puppets* (1920) – The Public Domain Review

Anyone who grew up with Shari Lewis’s Lamb Chop, Fred Rogers’ King Friday A book with puppets (1920). Late one night in Cleveland, Ohio, while making changes to their costumes, a cast of characters from Anglo-Irish playwright Lord Dunsany’s alien drama appear The golden fate – the Chief Prophet of the Stars, the Chamberlain, a few Spies and a Priest – treat Joseph as rudely and defiantly as Pinocchio abused Geppetto. The weary puppet seamstress tries to retreat from this imaginary Lilliputian attack and hears them in vain reciting their lofty, cosmopolitan origins from the ancient Indian Ramayana, Japanese jōruri dramas and medieval passion plays for boxing stars like Pulcinella, Punch, Kasperle and Karaghöz, to the devotions of modern immortals, from Shakespeare, Voltaire and Goethe to George Bernard Shaw and Maurice Maeterlinck.