Mark Twain, Hapless Collector, For $75,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

Mark Twain's autograph manuscript of  Chapter XX of A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880, has come to market. It is being offered for £50,000 ($75,825) by Peter Harrington Rare Books of London.

The chapter provides an amusing account of Twain at the mercy of his passion for collecting ceramics. As collectors we are slaves to an object or book that inflames our imagination and are weaklings against a good story which we hope the dealer is accurately telling as he stokes the fire in our brain. Twain was no exception.

He wryly confesses: "Among [my collection] was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little sketch of it here [his drawing on page 647 of the manuscript is reproduced in a more refined form on page 185 of the book] that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole. I bought this tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred and fifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the Etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now."

Twain goes on to discuss another of his favorite pieces, a Henri II plate which he has also sketched. "This is very fine and rare; the shape is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful decorations on it…It cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said there was not another plate just like it in the world. He said there was much false Henri II ware around, but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. He showed me its pedigree, or its history if you please….which traced that plate's movements all the way down to its birth…whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the whole ceramics world would be informed that it was now in my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid."

He then discusses "my exquisite specimen of Old Blue China.  This is considered to be the finest example of Chinese art now in existence. I do not refer to that bastard Chinese art of modern times but that noble and pure and genuine art which flourished under the fostering and appreciative care of the Emperors of the Chung-a-Lung-Fung dynasty…The little sketch which I have made of this gem cannot and does not do it justice…But I've got the expression though."

It's the mien of a cat with mouse on its mind, his Cheshire smile nailing Twain, "You're mine."

Tacit is Twain's reply, Nos morituri te salutamus, the hard-core collector's lament. We who are about to die salute you.

Twain goes on to describe his general feelings about the hobby, which apply to any collectible:

"It is the failing of the true keramiker, or the true devotee in any department of bric-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from exhaustion…[as if] talking of his sweetheart. The very 'marks' on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about about whether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious…

"…Many people…make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to call 'his despicable trifles;' and for 'gushing' over these trifles; and for exhibiting his 'deep infantile delight' in what they call his 'tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities;'…

"It is easy to say these things...

"For my part I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a keramiker – more, I am proud to be so named. I am proud to know that I lose my reason immediately in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if I had just emptied that jug."

It's seduction of the innocent collector by silver-tongued dealers, who, during the nineteenth century, were an often notorious lot who were matchmakers for a price, sold romance at a premium, and were pitiless when reeling in a big fish with sappy smile and deep pockets. And if the unfortunate creature wore a white suit, had a shock of white hair, smoked a black cigar, and told funny stories it was a great white whale primed for the harpoon and happy about it.

This is a wonderful manuscript chapter from one of Twain's most popular travel narratives, and such a deal: a copy of the first published edition of A Tramp Abroad is thrown in as a bonus.

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TWAIN, Mark [Samuel L. Clemens]. Autograph manuscript to Chapter XX of A Tramp Abroad. Octavo (200 × 135 mm), 43-leaf autograph manuscript in purple and black ink and pencil, generally rectos only, with numerous corrections, each leaf on a paper-guard. Bound with a portrait frontispiece, custom letterpress title-page, and the corresponding leaves from a copy of the first edition. Early twentieth-century red straight-grain morocco, titles and single-line rule to upper board gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Housed in a red cloth slipcase and chemise. Portrait frontispiece. Contents slightly toned and occasionally marked, closed tear to final leaf professionally repaired. Excellent condition.

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Manuscript images courtesy of Peter Harrington Rare Books, with our thanks.

Book images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The 2000 Year Old Man Talks Rare Books

by Stephen J. Gertz

At the recent 45th California  International Antiquarian Book Fair, the 2000 Year Old Man, the oldest rare book dealer in the history of the world, exhibited for the first time.

Booktryst had an opportunity to talk to him in the exhibitor hospitality suite.

SJG: Excuse me, Sir, is it true that you're the oldest living rare book dealer in the world?

2000 Year Old Man: Yes, I've been selling rare books since twelve.

SJG: Twelve years old?

2000 YOM: No. 12. The year.

SJG: You started early.

2000 YOM: Six months.

SJG: The year?

2000 YOM: No, age. There was no such thing as childhood when I was a kid. You were born, you were weaned, you went to work. I was an apprentice 2000 years before I went out on my own, in 12. There's a lot to learn.

SJG: So, you're actually 4000 years old?

2000 YOM: Yes, but it creeps-out the chicks so I lie. 2000 years old, they can live with.

SJG: What rare book shop did you serve your apprenticeship in?

2000 YOM: The rare book shop where I served my apprenticeship was Between the Scrolls. It was that or The Scroll Shop LLC, Lux Scrollis, Scroll Hunter's Holiday, or Scrolls R Us. I went with Between the Scrolls.

SJG: Why?

2000 YOM: Lots of action. There was always something going on.

SJG: Tell us about a typical day at Between the Scrolls..

2000 YOM: Oy, you wouldn't believe. Caesar and Cleopatra. Anthony and Cleopatra. Always between the scrolls, making out. No shame. No shame at all.

SJG: Who was the worst?

2000 YOM: Lipschitz and Cleopatra.

SJG: Lipschitz?

2000 YOM: Maximus Gaius Cornelius Murray Lipschitz. The general who became a slave! The slave who became a gladiator! The gladiator who became a dentist with a lucrative, high-end practice catering to the  patrician class! A great book collector, by the way.

SJG: What did he collect?

2000 YOM: Hammurabi first editions. Very heavy reading.

SJG: Deep intellectual content?

2000 YOM: No, two tons. They wrote on rocks in those days. You could get a hernia just turning a page. I once read Tolst-Oy bin Riten's 1782 B.C. classic, War and War, in it's first edition, on polished granite in a fine cuneiform hand, in a contemporary full coral and cobalt Travertine marble binding. A work of art. But heavy. Oy! I tore my rotator cuffs to shreds trying to flip to the index.

SJG: How were they shelved?

2000 YOM: Shelved? There were no shelves. You bought a book, it was delivered by cart, and slaves shlepped it into a pile in a corner of  your living room, next to the Barcolounger.

SJG: Who were your favorite authors in those days?

2000 YOM: Well, you know, there wasn't much to read way back then.

SJG: No?

2000 YOM: Nah. You had grainary reports, accounting ledgers,  royal victory propaganda...Nothing to read at the beach. Feh!

SJG: So, what did you read?

2000 YOM: Trash. I loved reading trash.

SJG: Why did you love reading trash?

2000 YOM: There was no shortage of it. Coffee cups, MacDonald's wrappers, bills, coupons, collection notices, empty cereal boxes, you name it. Where's there's people, there's trash.

2000 YOM: I draw the line at garbage, though. I won't read garbage. Yeccchhh!

SJG: What about later? Who did you read later?

2000 YOM: Oh, there was Pliny -

SJG: - The Younger or Elder?

2000 YOM: Younger, Elder, in between. Plenty o' Pliny. Good and Pliny. Couldn't get enough Pliny.

SJG: Did  you read Agricola?

2000 YOM: Read Agricola? I drank Agricola! It's the perfect beverage. The essence of the cola nut combined with notes of Spring crops. Very refreshing.

SJG: Carbonated?

2000 YOM: Of course, naturally. They threw a little activated carbon in there to purify it. You could die from the water back then.

SJG: Let's get back to your book shop.

2000 YOM: You have a time machine?

SJG: What was the oldest, rarest book you ever bought?

2000 YOM: The oldest, rarest book I ever bought was The Book of Moses.

SJG: First edition?

2000 YOM: Better. Original manuscript with corrections in his own hand.

SJG: I thought there were five books of Moses.

2000 YOM: There were but Moe only wrote the first one.

SJG: Really?

2000 YOM: Sure. He started the second, got a bad case of writer's cramp and that was that. You try writing with a stick. If he had a nice Bic pen, another story altogether but there you go.

SJG: Who wrote the others?

2000 YOM: Well, aside from Moe there was Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe.

SJG: The Stooges?

2000 YOM: Stooges of the Lord, to you. Don't be a wisenheimer.

SJG: What did it sell for?

2000 YOM: I haven't offered it until now. I've kept it in a vault since I bought it.

SJG: When did you buy it?

2000 YOM: I bought it in 452. A rich collector needed a little quick cash to get out of Rome before Attila the Hun showed up.

SJG: How much are you asking?

2000 YOM: 100 million dollars.

SJG: That's a lot of money.

2000 YOM: But free shipping and passes to Disneyland included!

SJG: What, if you don't mind my asking, did you pay for it back then?

2000 YOM: Back then I paid 500,000 shekels.

SJG: What's that in today's dollars?

2000 YOM: $17.50.

SJG: My goodness, that's not very much money for the original manuscript to the first book of the greatest work ever written, one that's influenced millions and millions and millions of people since it first came out.

2000 YOM: I could of done better. If I'd known it was going to be such a great big huge success I could have gotten it direct from Moe for practically nothing.  It was originally rejected by  all the publishers;  too many begats, not enough sex and violence. He never thought it would catch on. I could have gotten his desk, too. A robe. Who knew? I could kick myself.

By the way, who do you have to shtup to get a piece o' rugelach around here? They got pretzels up the keister, nuts, candy, some kind of mystery canapé but not a single prune rugelach.

SJG: Did you have any celebrity clients?

2000 YOM: Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed, of course, I had many, many celebrity clients.

SJG: Who was your most interesting celebrity client?

2000 YOM: My most interesting celebrity client was King Solomon.

SJG: The King Solomon?

2000 YOM: There was another one? First time he came in, he was with a real geszunta moid, a very healthy maiden, if you know what I mean. Zaftig. Such a punim. He says, "I'm King Solomon." I couldn't believe it.

My wife says, "Right, and I'm the Queen of Sheba."

And the gezunta moid says to her, "No, I am. Really."

SJG: Wow, that must have really been  something.

2000 YOM: Oh, boy! You don't know the half of it. They both wanted the same book.

SJG: What book was that?

2000 YOM: When Bad Hittites Happen To Good Hebrews. A cautionary tale with a message.

SJG: What happened?

2000 YOM: They were fighting over it. Finally, I took an axe, chopped the book in two, and gave them each half.

"You should be so wise," Sheba said to Sol.

SJG: Speaking of wisdom, why, after all these years, are you only now exhibiting at an antiquarian book fair"

2000 YOM: I saw the sign outside, Antiquarian Book Fair. I figured,  I  sell books; who's more antiquarian than me? I'm the most antiquarian bookseller you'll ever meet.

SJG: You certainly are, Sir. 4000 years old.

2000 YOM: Shhhh! Keep it down. I got my eye on that chick over there. She reminds me of one of my ex-girlfriends.

SJG: Who was that?

2000 YOM: The Empress Messalina. I love it when women wear glasses.

SJG: Why is that?

2000 YOM: When they take them off, it sends me.

SJG: Let's not go there.

2000 YOM: Why not? I'm still vital. I'm a very vital guy.

SJG: You're certainly an inspiration, Sir. Do you have any advice for book collectors?

2000 YOM: Yes! My advice to book collectors is to not buy rare books on rocks.

SJG: Do you have something against geology?

2000 YOM: I love geology! Geology's wonderful. It's my favorite of all the ologies. But rare rock books? You could give yourself a rupture. Who needs it? Feh!

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Apologies, respect and admiration to Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, who began as writers and whose early 1960s improv routine for friends at parties developed into a textbook on comedy. Individually and as a team they are American Treasures.

Here's a classic bit:


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Fran Lebowitz On Book Collecting

by Stephen J. Gertz

Fran  Lebowitz,  whose  debut  collection of devastatingly witty essays,  Metropolitan Life (1978), and  its  companion,  Social Studies (1981), put her on the literary star map as a latter-day Dorothy Parker,  and whose  subsequent "writer's  blockade" has   become  the most celebrated case of scribe with blank slate in recent - and, perhaps, since ancient - history, does not need an excuse to talk about books and reading.

In an interview-essay from 2010,  Fran Lebowitz on Reading, that has not received the broad attention it deserves, she discusses, amongst other things, rare books and their collection.

"I'm not a collector," she says. "I don't care about things like that. I'm not a collector because I'm not that organized. I'm not grown-up enough to collect things."

"But," she adds. "I have acquired a stellar collection of odd books, weirdo books, books that don't fit easily into categories."

A category, however, that her odd books do easily fit into is heteromorphic literature, a broad, all encompassing genre that, under this name has a nice, academic gloss that lends credence to their collection and study. The common alternative is Weirdiana. In Lebowitz's case, perhaps Oddiana is the proper category.

"I have a very small but choice collection of books about the Masons, the Odd Fellows and the Elks. I particularly like Odd Fellows books. They're a little harder to find… You don't hear about the Odd Fellow much any more. I looked them up in the telephone book here but I guess in New York you don't need a separate listing for Odd Fellows."

Though she can be bitingly caustic she is invariably polite, so it should come as no surprise that she is a fan of a certain arbiter of the social graces.

"I collect Emily Post. I think I have everything of hers but I don't keep up with the revised editions. I have a book called Manners for the Millions [1932, in three different editions], which is a manual for immigrants to the United States. Emily Post may tell you how to properly address a Colonel, this tells you not to wipe your nose on your sleeve."

Many careers as a rare bookseller have begun when personal collecting got out of hand and insanity prevailed.

"I was once in Cleveland on a book tour and a bookshop there had just bought the library of a parochial grammar school and they were selling the books for ten cents a pound. There were these big meat scales. I went crazy…For about thirty dollars I bought eight thousand books.

Beware the parent whose personal habits and dire influence can lead children astray and onto a dark path for life.

"My mother was a big bookworm. Not a bibliophile. My mother got me into what has been for my entire life certainly what could be called my drug addiction: the reading of detective stories. I read five or six a week and must have eight billion of them…I suppose I read them for the atmosphere or the characters but I read them like a drug. I read them instead of taking heroin."

Don't imagine that Fran Lebowitz is a literary snob:

"I love trash. I like Jacqueline Susann and the early Harold Robbins. I love Jackie Collins."

She also has an interest in smut.

"I have a pornography collection. It's not a huge one. The really good stuff is too expensive for me. I wrote some for a company called Midway Press...

"The first one I wrote myself and it was called House of Leather...Then I wrote two or three others with about five people...My copies of these books are gone and I'm not looking for them. I have a finicky aversion to buying second hand pornography because I know where it's been."

Her reading and collecting interests are not confined to detective fiction, weird books, etiquette manuals, and porn.

"I would say that if I collect anything literary I collect O'Hara first editions, not that they're that hard to find. Each printing was about eight billion. O'Hara is a really important American writer and a really overlooked one."

On the life of a dedicated reader frittering away precious time, Fran has this to say:

"I would rather read than have any kind of real life, like working, or being responsible...All the things that I never did because I was reading, so what? If someone said to me, how did you spend your life? I'd have to say, lying on the sofa reading."

Fran Lebowitz's relationship to books is intimately overt.

"...When I was a very little child after I'd read a book I really liked I'd kiss it. Love is really the word... Children have emotional relationships with inanimate objects...The way a child makes a person out of a doll, which I never did, I made people out of books."

It is always comforting to be surrounded by loved ones.

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Read the full interview here.

This interview, and others with Diana Vreeland, John Waters, Susanna Moore, and Albert Murray, appears on the website I recently discovered for an impressive book shop in Harlem, NYC, The Private Library. They appear in the website's section, The Well-Dressed Bibliophile. I have devoured everything on those pages; a very tasty meal.

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If you haven't seen Public Speaking, Martin Scorsese's 2010 HBO documentary about Fran Lebowitz, why not? It's now available on DVD.

Here's the trailer:

She is the consummate New Yorker-Smart-Funny-Yakker. I watched it three times in a row.

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Rare and Vintage Joke Books to Make the Season Jolly

Light up your Christmas party with  vintage knee-slappers, rib-ticklers, and side-splitters. Or, pass the corn during Christmas dinner.

by Stephen J. Gertz

Roaring Jokes. No. 42. Laugh and be happy. Sixty laughs a minute.
The latest and greatest original jokes. Compiled by A Star Performer. 
 Baltimore: I & M Ottenheimer, n.d. (c. 1915)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 58pp., 6pp ads.

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States a small handful of publishers dominated a rapidly growing genre of publication, the joke book. Meant for the masses, they possessed no pretensions to sophistication; the jokes were simple, sophomoric, and blunt. They were easy to "get." Going straight for the gut the jokes never went over anyone's head. To the contrary, they conked you right on the noggin. Crude, and by contemporary standards, vulgar, this was the humor of the man in the street and working class.

Choice Dialect and Vaudeville Stage Jokes.
Containing Side Splitting Stories, Jokes, Gags, Readings
and Recitations in German, Irish, Scotch, French,
Chinese, Negro and other Dialects.
Chicago: Frederick J. Drake & Co., (c. 1902).
Small 8vo., pict. wrappers, 181pp.

Ethnic jokes were all the rage. Stereotypes were milked for all they were worth.

Wehman Bros' Barber-Shop Jokes.  
New York: Wehman Bros., n.d. (c. 1908).
16mo., pict. wrappers, 58pp., 6pp ads.

The corner barber shop, a neighborhood hub where men would routinely congregate, was the source for news, gossip, and the latest jokes. Barbers often bore the brunt of the humor.

A man walks into a barber shop and sits in the chair. The barber asks "how do you want your haircut?" the man says "I want it short on one side, uneven on the other side, crooked in the front and a hacked up in the back." The barber said "I don't know if I can do that." The man replied "I don't know why not, that's exactly what you did last time.

The Great Lingard. Joker. Full of A. 1. Side-Splitters - Funny Stories -
Natty Anecdotes - Tip-Top Jests - And Heaps of "Bully" Conundrums.
New York: Frederic A. Brady, (c. 1870). Later edition (ca. 191-?).
12mo., pict. wrappers, 64pp.

OTT, Irv. New Italian Joke Book.
A Select Collection of the Latest and Best Italian Jokes,
Monologues, Stories, etc, Used by the Most Renowned
Celebrities of the American Stage. 
 Baltimore: I & M Ottenheimer, n.d. (c. 1909)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 63pp.

What's the difference between an Italian grandmother and an elephant?

       50 pounds and a black dress.
 

Who knew that Baltimore was once a major center for the publication of jokes? I. and M. Ottenheimer, founded in 1890, published childrens books, cookbooks, pop-ups, and joke books. Brother Irving was the jokemeister under the pseudonym, Irv Ott. It remained in business until 2002 when the laughs that never quit finally succumbed to senescence and/or political correctness.

The hobo-tramp was a ripe object for humor. Hold the rim-shot:

What's the name for a short-legged tramp?

       A low-down bum.

OTT, Irv. (edited by). New Tramp Joke Book.
Containing a Select Collection of Monologues Jokes,
Funny Stories, etc., as Told by Leading Footlight Artists. 
 Baltimore: I & M Ottenheimer, n.d. (ca. 191-?)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 62pp., 2pp ads.

Jewish jokes, were, in their infancy in the U.S., called Hebrew jokes. Perhaps the word "Hebrew" was more amusing than "Jewish;" it can be played with on the tongue, HE-brew, HEE-brew, who, what? which may have made for funnier oral delivery. Funnier to whom is another question.

A Hebrew took his boy Ikey to the theater and went up in the gallery. The play was so exciting Ikey leaned over the railing and fell downstairs. His father got excited and hollered:

"Ikey, for God's sake, come back. It costs a dollar down dere."

That joke, 103 years old, appeared in The New Hebrew Joke Book, issued by Irving and Moses Ottenheimer in 1907. According to their grandson, Allan T. Hirsh, their motivation was simply to satisfy the huge demand for ethnic humor, no matter what ethnic group.

Wehman Bros. Hebrew Jokes No. 1.
New York: Wehman Brothers, 1906.

"Woolworth's sold those books for 10 cents," he said. "They sold them by the carload."

Irv and Moe harvested humor wherever they could find it, and they usually found it in the theater, although the theaters they found it in could never be accused of purveying Culture.

"My grandfather's secretary told me he used to take her to the burlesque show to get jokes," Mr. Hirsh said. "She took her pad to write and she wrote so much she never looked up."

With its roots in early eighteenth century European theatrical and musical parody, Burlesque (not to be confused with Burl Ives) in the United States, with its addition of the strip-tease to the mix of jokes and songs (thus sinking it to the lowest, though nonetheless popular, form of theatrical entertainment), became the crucible in which modern American comedy was made.

OTT, Lester B. (compiled by). You Tell 'Em Funny Sayings...
The Latest in Novelty Jokes.
Baltimore: I & M Ottemnheimer, n.d. (ca. 191-?)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 64pp.
Each entry begins "You tell 'em...",
i.e. "You tell 'em, June. And don't July."

That ethnic humor was once so popular should come as no surprise. It followed the huge waves of immigration of the nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, and greeted immigrants to America as soon as they disembarked. Humor provided a non-violent release for the deep anxieties that the huge influx of immigrants inspired in the native-born.  Per usual, humor was the best, if often bitter-tasting medicine, and Burlesque provided the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

Ethnic humor was as necessary to the immigrants as it was to the native-born. It provided them with ammunition for self-defense, one immigrant group could laugh at another; the fecal matter rolled downhill, from one group to another, until it landed on the latest.

Smiles. Side Splitting Jokes. No. 36.
Containing a Wonderful Selection of Jokes,
Witty-Sayings Etc. New and Original.
Baltimore: I & M Ottemnheimer, n.d. (c. 1915)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 58pp., 6pp ads.

The market for ethnic humor was not confined to immigrant groups. Defying gravity, often the ubu rolled uphill. The white elite was celebrated and sent up as  the Smart Set, a moniker widely established in popular American culture by the introduction, in 1900,  of Colonel William d'Alton Mann's new magazine of the same name, the self-proclaimed "Aristocrat Among Magazines,"  a slogan and  group begging for ridicule, aristos traditionally fair game to the masses.

The era was a free-for-all  of competitive, inter-ethnic humor, no group safe, no holds barred. It was war by punchline, and the war toughened you up, yet at the same time softened shoulders and elbows in the mix. In its heyday, ethnic humor made it a little easier for everyone to live together without going at each others' throat.

Up-To-Date Smart Set Jokes. No. 48.
A selection of original classical jokes,
laughable stories, witty sayings, etc.
Baltimore: I & M Ottenheimer, n.d. (c. 1915)
16mo., pict. wrappers, 58pp., 6pp ads.

In Répétition Générale, an article appearing in the July 21, 1921 issue of Smart Set, H.L. Mencken  and George Jean Nathan wrote, "I have always been of the opinion that the so-called comic weeklies exercise a far more profound influence on the life of a community than the so-called serious weeklies. It is the trick of life to conduct itself not after the serious criticisms of itself but after the humorous. The personal conduct of the average American community is affected more greatly by Lifes, Pucks, and Judges, than by the Nations, Freemans, and New Republics."

These joke books were the genesis of the comic weekly magazines that emerged 1910 - 1925, i.e. Captain Billy's Whiz Bang and those that Mencken and Nathan cite above.

IRISH, Marie. The Christmas Entertainer.
Recitations, Monologues, Drills with Songs,
Exercises and Dialogues for All Ages.
Chicago: T. S. Denison & Co., (c. 1919).
Sm. 8vo., pict. wrappers, 134pp. With illustrations.

Finally, for the budding Santa stand-up comic and all-'round entertainer, a couple of  vintage stocking-stuffers.

KELLOGG, Alice M. Christmas Entertainments.
Containing Fancy Drills, Acrostics, Motion Songs,
Tableaux, Short Plays, Recitation in Costume.
For Children of Five to Fifteen Years.
 Phil.: Penn Publ. Co., 1920. (c. 1907).
Sm. 8vo., pict. wrappers, 120pp.

D'ja hear the joke about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's Christmas dinner? 

       It was a real turkey.

And so are most of the jokes found within these books. They embarrass us. They're awful. We feel guilty.  Particularly when we can't help it and laugh, if only to ourselves. There is no getting around the fact that a great deal of humor is usually at someone else's expense.

While we've presented these books within the context of making Christmas a little bit merrier, the real  gift is that they provide one of the best historical sources of pre-Modern American humor that can be found. If you are a fan and student of comedy, there is no better way to become acquainted with its past. If you are a sociologist and historian there may be no better way to gauge the tenor of an era than by its humor; few things are as revealing as that which makes us laugh. 

And if you are considering getting into book collecting and seek a fun and fascinating entry point  and are on a budget, rare, vintage joke books are an ideal area to collect in. All the books displayed here are available for less than $100, often much less.

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With the exception of Wehman Bros. Hebrew Jokes, all images are courtesy of David Mason Books, which is currently offering the books for sale.
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