The Fudge Family in Paris

The Fudge Family in Paris is an 1818 epistolary verse novel by Thomas Moore. It was intended to be a comedic critique of the post-war settlement of Europe following the Congress of Vienna and the large number of British and Irish families who flocked to France for tourism. It was inspired in part by a brief trip that Moore had made to Paris.

Title page to the 1818 fourth edition

It depicts the visit to Paris of the fictional Fudge family in the wake of the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the restoration of the Bourbon regime. The story is told through the letters of four characters: the father Phil Fudge, his children Bob and Biddy and the family tutor Phelim Connor. Phil is in the city researching a book which he intends to be propaganda on behalf of his patron Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary. His son is a dandy mainly interested in the city's restaurants while his dizzy daughter is seeking romance. She falls in love with a young man who she believes to be the King of Prussia in disguise, but is in fact a draper.

It was published on 20 April 1818 by Longmans. The work proved popular and sparked a number of imitations by other writers depicting the Fudge Family's antics in other cities including Edinburgh, Washington and Dublin.[1] Castlereagh, who was the target of much of the humour, read the work and did not much mind it but objected to the letters of the pro-Bonaparte tutor Connor which he thought were "in very bad taste".[2]

Moore's publisher proposed that he should write a sequel, The Fudge Family in London, but he rejected their offer.[3] Following his travels in Italy he began writing The Fudge Family in Italy but was disappointed with his efforts and abandoned the project. In 1835 he finally wrote a sequel, The Fudge Family in England.

References

1. Kelly p313
2. Kelly p.311
3. Kelly p.321

Bibliography

• Kelly, Ronan. Bard of Erin: The Life of Thomas Moore. Penguin Books, 2009.