Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady (By a Gentleman with a Blue Beard) and Famous Love Affairs was published by Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1922. The collection contains two sequences: a series of sonnets that parody the conventions of love poetry (the idealized lady, the suffering gentleman, the elevated diction), and a series of comic retellings of famous historical and literary love stories.
The sonnets are technically accomplished — Marquis was a skilled formal versifier who could write convincing Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets while simultaneously making fun of them. The humor arises from the gap between the elevated form (the sonnet’s traditional associations with sincere passion) and the irreverent content (a gentleman with a blue beard — the serial wife-murderer of fairy tale — addressing love poetry to a red-haired lady whose attractions are described in deflating physical detail rather than idealized abstraction).
The “Famous Love Affairs” section retells stories like Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet in comic modern language, stripping away the romantic elevation and revealing the human absurdity beneath. The technique anticipates later comic retellings of classic stories and demonstrates Marquis’s conviction that humor and literature are not opposed but complementary.
The collection reveals Marquis as a more serious poet than his reputation as a humorist might suggest: even his parodies demonstrate genuine command of form, and some of the sonnets achieve effects that transcend comedy.
Collecting Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady
First edition (Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, NY, 1922): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $20–$50
- Very good: $8–$20