Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man

by H. H. (Henry Howarth) Bashford

"Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man" by Sir Henry Howarth Bashford is a comic novel published in 1924. This anonymous work presents the self-told story of Augustus Carp, a churchwarden and Sunday-school superintendent who considers himself morally superior to everyone around him. Glorious in his mediocrity and relentless in exposing others' faults, Carp pursues goodness and personal advancement with equal fervor. Critics have praised it as one of the twentieth century's great comic novels—a masterpiece of booming humbug and lower-middle-class bigotry transformed into something resembling fairy-tale.