Nuts and Bolts: Gesta Romanorum.

The Gesta Romanorum is a thirteenth-century version of an after-dinner speech anecdote book.

There are admittedly a few differences. The Gesta Romanorum are mostly in Latin (a bit of which still goes down very well in speeches, though it makes for a poor punchline) and instead of being aimed at well-oiled business-men, or self-congratulatory charity administrators, the Gesta Romanorum was aimed (officially, at least) at preachers.

The Gesta Romanorum tends to expound a moral, too.

I can't say the Gesta Romanorum are much read today, but the anecdotes therein (which might have originated in England or France or Germany) were snaffled up by Chaucer (in The Man of Lawe's Tale), and Shakespeare (King Lear), and Boccaccio, among others. 

Cordelia being tragic, by Sir John Gilbert

It was a best-seller in its time, and is available in translation still - which is more than most of those after-dinner anecdote books are going to be in eight years, let alone eight hundred.

Nuts and Bolts: the Gesta Romanorum. This means Deeds of the Romans, which is a bit confusing as not all the stories are about, um, the Romans.

Ah well, never mind.