The Shocking Hard-Boiled World Of Librarians!

by Stephen J. Gertz

They take no guff from deadbeats.

Original cover art by Casey Jones for Crackers in Bed
by Vic Fredericks. Pocket Books 1053 (1955).

Books and snacks in the boudoir are their after-hours business - and business is good.

Original cover art by Peff (Sam Peffer) for ?, London: Pan Books.

They're know-it-alls with only one answer - the one that men want!

Original cover art by Darcy (Ernest Chiriaka) for Dearest Mama
by Walewska. Digit Books 393 (1956).

They read trash for breakfast, season it with tawdry filth, chase it with smutty little stories, and reach their bliss multiple times but it's never enough to satisfy their primitive hunger!

Original cover art by Bill George for Haunted Lady
by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Dell 814 (1955).

Though they get creeped-out by wacko stalkers with twisted desires,

Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for The Girl From Big Pine
by Talmadge Powell. Monarch 483 (1964).

they're always willing to go out on a limb for a sweet daddy-o with dangerous eyes and a savage smirk!

They're merciless with bimbos who avoid books,

Original cover art by Reginald Heade for Plaything of Passion
by Jeanette Revere. Archer Books 57 (1950).

and possess mad, unholy desire and strange diabolical hate and all-consuming love for abbreviations formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word.

Original cover art for The Case of the Rolling Bones
by Erle Stanely Gardner. Pocket Books 2464 (1949).

They play craps with their reputation and gamble away their morals for a chance at the big time - but a good time will do!

They're a strange cult into weird hats and bizarre dining rituals,

Original cover art by Verne Tossey for The Case of the Lonely Heiress
by Erle Stanley Gardner. Pocket Book 922 (1952).

with sensitive janes overcome in the public john by loathsome forces beyond their control!

Original cover art by Rafael DeSoto for Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective
by Agatha Christie. Dell 550 (1951).

But when those sensitive janes detect halitosis and rank B.O. wafting their way they smell trouble and it's pine-scent Mace® for the great unwashed with library cards!

They're no patsies, they ain't like Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Talk therapy don't cut it for some and she knows it.

Dr. Melfi: That Departures magazine out there. Did you give any thought at all to someone else who might wanna read before you tore out the entire page?

Tony Soprano: What?

Dr. Melfi: It's not the first time you've defaced my reading materials.

Tony Soprano: You saw that, huh? People tear shit outta your magazines all the time, they're a mess. I try to read 'em.

Dr. Melfi: I don't think I can help you.

Tony Soprano: Well, change 'em. Bring in some new shit. 

Dr. Melfi: I mean therapeutically.

Tony Soprano: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, OK? Now what the fuck is this? You're, uh, firin' me 'cause I defaced your Departures magazine?

No, when L-Girls are confronted by a chronic defacer of library periodicals they don't mess around. When they say get lost they mean take a long walk off a short pier: they cancel his subscription to life; you won't see him around no more; he sleeps with the fische.

Original cover art by Gerald Gregg for Who's Calling?
by Helen McCloy. Dell 151 (1947).

Silence in the stacks? Tell it to the library card-holding psycho with logorrhia and a Van Gogh fixation!

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of the library book-drop box? Drop-offs, droppings, or rotting, vermin-infested fast-food left-overs? It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

 

And how 'bout that famous writer of L.A.-noir novels who visited his local branch of the LAPL, hit on a married reference librarian I know, wouldn't take no for an answer, kept sending flowers to her, and didn't stop his unwelcome advances until she flipped him an oath and he skulked off and out of the library?

Original cover art by Rudolph Belarski for Don't Ever Love Me
by Octavus Roy Cohen. Popular Library 332 (1951).

The fact that she fought for her intellectual freedom to be left alone while wielding a heater to punctuate her point may have had something to do with it. He had an acute fear of perforation by a stacked n' sultry long tall sally with a MLS, a gripe, and a gat. Yet where had she been all his life?

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All images courtesy of Professional Library Literature with special thanks to the anonymous creator of these brilliant book parodies, who, I suspect, may be in fear of losing their job if outed. Additional thanks to B.T. Carver of LISNews for drawing our attention to this delightful webpage. There are more of the same on the site.

The Sopranos dialogue from Episode #85, The Blue Comet (2007), written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner.

Those with knowledge of the unidentified books (or pulp magazines) are encouraged to leave a comment.

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Of Related Interest:

A Lurid Story of Book Dope And Lives Twisted By Mad Desire!

Caution: These Books Are Too Hot To Handle!
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Educate! Amuse! In Color! The George M. Fox Collection of Children’s Books

by Alastair M. Johnston

There’s another children’s book show at San Francisco Public Library (through March 10th 2013), but this is the first since 1986 to draw on the library’s own superb resource: the George M. Fox Collection of Children’s Books.

The collecting of children’s books is a relatively modern phenomenon. There are great collections at Princeton (Cotsen Collection), in Toronto (Osborne Collection), Oxford (Opie Collection), UCLA, NYPL (Schatzki Collection) and in Florida (the Baldwin Library), that I know of, but the Fox Collection is remarkable, not only for its breadth but also for the condition of the books.

George Fox Sr was an executive at Milton Bradley and when they acquired the publishing firm of McLoughlin Brothers of New York, they didn’t want the firm’s archives and decided to dump them. Fox & another executive split them. The archives contained file copies of all their publications including a large cache of books by British publishers that were sent to them for consideration for republishing (or they may have been acquired to see what the competition was up to and ultimately to pirate them). They also contained the original woodblocks for some books as well as related ephemera. The original artwork that survived is at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. Fox added to the collection and gave over 2000 children’s books to the library in 1978. The current exhibition (the first since 1978) features over eighty examples of 19th-century color printing, especially color wood engraving and chromolithographs. Early hand-colored images are included as well. Highlights include “toy” and “moveable” books; work from the shop of Edmund Evans (who published all of Kate Greenaway's works) and many examples of fine British chromolithography from the firms of Thomas Nelson & Sons, Frederick Warne, Dean & Son and George Routledge & Sons.

McLoughlin Brothers’ motto “Educate and Amuse” marks an important turning point because, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, children’s books tended to be rather tedious and more about indoctrinating kids in good behavior than having fun. Catherine Sinclair’s Holiday House, 1839, is generally considered the first book written for children that does not have a built-in guilt-trip.

Tastes change over time also. The British books in the collection are sometimes marked up with alterations for the American market, or editorial comments. The Little Pig’s Ramble from Home, which is a personal favorite, has “Not much liked, very ordinary,” penciled on it. This is one of the titles that has survived elsewhere too and the Baldwin copy can be read on line at the childrenslibrary.org. In The Little Pig’s Ramble, Jack Pig puts on airs (a wig and top hat) and sets off to explore the world, only to be confronted with a pork butcher! Moral: Stay home if you know what’s good for you!

The books were often published in uniform series like “Uncle Buncle’s” or “Grandmama Easy's” and if the title was well-known it might generate sequels, as Ruth McGurk pointed out in her essay on the Fox Collection: “They are shameless in putting out sequels The Cock Robin story is spun into The Sad Fate of Cock Robin, Sick Robin and his Kind, Nurse Jenny Wren, Death & Burial of Cock Robin, Cock Robin Alive & Well Again and Mrs Dove’s Party. In the latter the guilty sparrow is punished by social ostracism.

And though he hopped in quite bold and undaunted,
He found not a bird that in kindness would greet him.”

He shoulda stayed in Las Vegas. Above is a spread from an 1850s book with hand-colored wood engravings: Mama Lovechild’s [sic] Life & Death of Cock Robin, published by McLoughlin Bros in New York from stereotyped plates.

Not on display is a personal favorite: the giant hen in Learning to Count: One, Two, Buckle my Shoe (by Augustus Hoppin, New York, Hurd & Houghton, ca 1870), but it is in the collection should you choose to explore it.

The books were advertised as cheap, colorful (some printed in ten colors) and above all avoiding vulgar sentiments. The big guns of children’s book illustration, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane emerged in the late Victorian era and are well-represented in the collection. There’s even a Caldecott sketch “in the style of Greenaway.” As McGurk pointed out, “Walter Crane has a bent for whimsical detail.” She points out the Wedgwood bowls in the Three Bears rather luxe kitchen, labeled “Ursus Major, Ursus Minor, and Ursus Minimus”! Caldecott also wrote to Scribner's (who legally imported his books) complaining about the garish colors in the pirated editions of his books from McLoughlin and warning readers not to accept the cheap knock-offs.

Short but sweet, Four Footed Favourites by Mrs Surr, published by Nelson & Sons in London, and illustrated by Hector Giacomelli, appeared in the 1880s. The recently digitized SFPL copy can be read on the Internet Archive site.

The SFPL copy of Comic Insects is also found there. It has anthropomorphism reminiscent of Tenniel’s Caterpillar in Alice (and of course Grandville), but above all it has spectacular color printing from chromolithography, including gold (above, which is very tricky to achieve). Published by Frederick Warne, ca 1872, it was written by the Rev F A S Reid, illustrated by Berry F Berry, engraved by Dalziel Brothers and printed from plates made by Kronheim & Co.

Aunt Louisa’s Magic Modeller (London: Frederick Warne & Co., ca 1881) is a paper toy you cut out to build a replica of the Tower of London. These paper toys were very popular in France & Germany also and make the child a participant in the project rather than a proprietor.

More elaborate toy books include Six Mysterious Pictures from Chaos: affording great amusement and intense surprise among children and their little friends (London: Dean & Sons, ca 1878). Such moveable books inspired the Surrealists in their game of Exquisite Corpse. The show is edifying, and also amusing.

Laura E. Wasowicz, Curator of Children's Literature from the American Antiquarian Society, will discuss the history of McLoughlin Brothers (1858–1950), and their role as producers of color picture books in America. The lecture will be held in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Library, on Saturday, January 5th, at 2 p.m.
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Of Related Interest:

Draw Me A Story: Collecting Children's Book Illustrations.

A Movable Book Feast: The World's Greatest Collection Comes To Auction.

Movable Books Pop Up At Smithsonian.

Dean & Son Movable Books and How To Date Them.
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The LSD Library Goes To Harvard

by Stephen J. Gertz

FABRICE, Delphi. L'Opium A Paris.
Paris: La Renaissance Du Livre, 1907.

The Ludlow-Santo Domingo (LSD) Library of rare books, the world's first, largest, and most distinguished collection of the literature of psychotropic drugs, has been placed at Harvard's Houghton Library on long-term loan after extended and highly sensitive negotiations with the family of the late Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Jr (1958-2009), the eldest son and scion to the fortune of Columbian business magnate Julio Mario Santo Domingo (1923-2011) and omnivorous collector of books associated with the 60s Counterculture in the U.S. and Europe.

Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll was not an area of book collecting that the family, particularly his  wife, Vera, from whom he was estranged, found edifying; it was, apparently, a source of embarrassment, and since Mr. Santo Domingo's death the family had worked hard to disburse his collection with discretion through intermediaries who insisted upon the highest degree of secrecy from potential buyers - institutions, dealers, and auction houses - and negotiations with all were, reportedly, difficult.

WILLIAMS, Fred V. The Hop-Heads of San Francisco.
San Francisco: Walter N. Brunt, 1920.

It was, then, something of a shock when Harvard formally and by name announced acquisition of the major part of the Julio Santo Domingo collection - over 25,000 books, manuscripts, works of art, audio recordings, and films - on September 28th of this year. When I inquired close to a year ago while chasing a rumor Harvard refused comment.

As did The Roll N' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum & Library and Archives which coyly responded, "no comment at this time," a non-confirming confirmation that they had acquired a chunk of the collection. And as did every auction house suspected of being involved in negotiations. (A slice of Santo Domingo's magnificent collection of fine erotica and Baudelaire was recently offered by Christie's-Paris without provenance; highly familiar with the collection, I recognized a few singular items). And last year a selection of books on '60s Counterculture from the collection was discreetly acquired by Maggs in London; journalist Susan Halas recently interviewed Carl Williams of Maggs about  Santo Domingo's Counterculture library for Americana Exchange.

FOLEY, Charles. Kowa, La Mystérieuse.
Paris: Editions Pierre Lafitte, 1920.

The cornerstone of the LSD Library - however large just one part of Santo Domingo's huge book collection - was the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library of the literature of psychotropic drugs, which Julio (we knew each other) acquired in early 2002 from its founders and curators, rare book dealers Michael Horowitz and William Dailey, along with Robert Barker and Michael Aldrich  Ph.D, who established the collection in the early 1970s in response to the dearth of historical resources and research materials on a controversial subject at the forefront of public consciousness and discussion. It was, and will now remain, the pre-eminent book collection on the matter.

VAUDÈRE. Jane de la. Folie D'Opium.
Paris: Albert Méricant, n.d. [c. 1910].
Unrecorded; the only known copy.

But before Julio bought the Ludlow, William Dailey (with my assistance as his cataloger/manager) was sending low- to high five figure shipments of drug-related books to Julio's offices in Geneva every other month or so. Julio bought just about anything you offered  related to his area of interest. I recall that, early on, Dailey sent Julio a very long list. He returned it with only a few items checked off. Bill and I were stunned - this was great, gotta-have stuff. It turned out that Julio had merely indicated the books he didn't want - only because he already had copies.

(I think that shipment was worth $88,000; if not, it was another air freight-load to him for that sum - I died a thousand deaths in the course of arranging its pick-up and shipment. After 9/11, moving large quantities of rare books on illegal drugs out of the country actually became easier. By then, the office guys at Swiss Air freight and those on the dock had become old friends of Dailey Rare Books and we were granted "known carrier" status after an airline official took a quick look-see through the shop. Our shipments no longer required time-consuming piece-by-piece inspection and too much paperwork; now, two quick phone calls and a fax).

Julio would visit L.A. once or twice a year and take Bill and me out to lunch. What did we talk about? Uh, books; Julio couldn't get enough of the subject. He was a hip bazzionaire and always appeared in crisp white shirt, pressed faded jeans, sharp blue blazer, and black tassled loafers, a casual ensemble of uncasual quality and cost to the average citizen. He was a rock n' roll jet-setter; he had personal relationships with rock n' roll's royalty and routinely vacationed with them.

Nick Carter Weekly No. 136: Une Fumerie d'Opium. An Anarchist Plot.
New York: Street & Smith, c. 1905. French edition.

Once, while at Dailey Rare Books, I picked up the phone. It was Julio, calling from Geneva, Paris, Berlin, somewhere in Europe. We chatted for a moment then I passed the call over to William.

"Hi, Bill," Julio said, "say hello to Yoko."  Yup, that Yoko. Mick Jagger was also a friend on a long list of luminaries that were his genuine pals.

When I sold my small yet precious collection of drug literature to William Dailey in 1999 it wound up in Julio's collection. When Julio invited me to Geneva to catalog the enormous number of drug paperbacks in his collection (alas, not realized) I looked forward to seeing those old friends.

Feral House, 2008.

When I was preparing my book, Dope Menace (2008), Julio generously opened his collection to me, and had his staff in Geneva - Beatrice Rodriguez, Natasha Antonini, and Flavia Aulieri -  send requested book images for inclusion into DM, which was the first and last volume to cite the Ludow-Santo-Domingo Library as a reference source. Julio was supportive and proud of the project and looked forward to its publication. He was, sadly, extremely ill at the time of the book's release and while I sent him a copy I'm not sure that he saw it before he died.

Dr. [Julius] Cantala.
The Idol: Opium, Heroin, Morphine, and Their Kingdoms.
[N.p.]: Botwen Printing, 1924.

That the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library is now at Harvard is a relief to those who spent decades assembling its core and those associated with it. We were afraid that the collection would be broken-up and cast to the winds. There is only one other significant collection of this material in the world, in private hands, yet it's a handsome dwarf compared to the LSD. Now, scholars will have access to the finest, broadest, and deepest collection of books, art, and ephemera related to psychotropic drugs on Earth.

I think I speak for all with their hearts in the collection when I thank the family of Julio Santo Domingo, particularly his widow, Vera, for keeping the LSD Library whole and placing it at Harvard, where the collection, once the bastard step-child of the book collecting world - years ago, William Dailey was denied membership in The Grolier Club because of his involvement with the Ludlow - is now recognized for its significance and takes a deserved place of  honor alongside Harvard's other distinguished special collections.

Work and Win No. 275: Fred Fearnot's Trip to Frisco, or
Trapping the Chinese Opium Smuggler.
New York: Frank Tousey, March 11, 1904.

Julio Santo Domingo, Jr.  is surely smiling, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Brian Jones, Jerry Garcia, Marc Bolan, Nico, Harry Nilsson, Jim Morrison, Elvis, etc. at his side because Julio has no doubt become best friends with all of them. And they're likely talking about this, what the Harvard Gazette called, A Collection Unlike Others.

"We got the sex and drugs," said Leslie Morris, curator of Modern Books & Manuscripts at Houghton Library, of the Santo Domingo Library.

And now, a stately procession of ignoble books of the sort that Julio loved and owned, copies of many now,  presumably, on deposit at Harvard, the most respected institution of higher learning in the world. 

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All images from Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks 1900-1975, each, save the cover image, courtesy of the Ludlow-Santo-Domingo Library.

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New Bibliography of Dickens First American Editions a Must-Have

By Stephen J. Gertz

It's the literary scholarship event of this, the Charles Dickens bicentennial. Let the celebration begin.

Charles Dickens: A Bibliography of His First American Editions 1836-1870, the eagerly anticipated third volume of Walter E. Smith's acclaimed series of bibliographies of Charles Dickens' works, thirty years in the making and scheduled for release in September 2012, is now available for pre-order.

This significant work identifies the first and early American editions of Charles Dickens' novels and Sketches by Boz and traces their publishing history, including various impressions and sub-editions, from 1836 to 1870, the year of Dickens' death. Each of the entries provides detailed textual data and binding descriptions and is supplemented by photographic reproductions of title pages and bindings. The notes contain interesting comments about the novels, including their appearances in newspapers and journals, typographical points, and payments made to Dickens.

The bibliography was compiled from firsthand examinations of the books at major libraries and institutions throughout the country, in private collections, and in the possession of several rare book dealers. The content complements and stylistically conforms to the author's previous two-volume bibliography on Dickens's English editions. 

The book is an indispensable reference for libraries, collectors, booksellers, researchers, and students of Victorian literature since no other work of this magnitude on Dickens' American editions has ever been undertaken or published.

Oak Knoll Press is the exclusive distributor of this 456-page opus. Limited to 500 copies at only $95 each, the book is expected to sell out very soon after publication. To assure that a copy will be available to you, don't hesitate: Pre-Order NOW.

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SMITH, Walter E. Charles Dickens: A Bibliography of His First American Editions 1836-1870. Calabasas, CA: David Brass Rare Books, Inc. First edition. Quarto (10 3/4 x 8 inches). 456 pp. Illustrated with title pages to each described edition. Green cloth. Dust jacket. $95.

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Full disclosure: I supervised the book's production for David Brass Rare Books.
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Novelist Richard Brautigan's Brains At Bancroft Library: A Grand Guignol Adventure!

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Bancroft Library.

The papers of 'Sixties Counterculture novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, who, in 1984, committed suicide at his desk with a gunshot to the head, rest in the The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley.

Poet J.J. Phillips, while working in the manuscript division at the Bancroft, rough-sorted Brautigan's papers when the library acquired them. She had no idea that latex gloves and surgical mask would be appropriate to the task.

"I know you know that Brautigan blew his brains out, literally blew his mind," she wrote to poet, novelist and essayist Andrei Codrescu at Exquisite Corpse.  "What you might not be aware of is that he blew his brains out all over pages of his last manuscript... I handled them, archived them, ran my hands over his desiccated brain matter on numerous occasions, though at first I had no idea what I was touching because the Library said nothing and even denied what became all too apparent after I eliminated the other possibilities of what this strange stuff could be (I’m not unfamiliar with such things, and my eyes didn’t deceive me).

"The coroner’s report confirmed my suspicions. I see what’s on these pages as something of a completely different order than coffee stains, cigarette burns, the tomato seeds that Josephine Miles idly spat onto her mss., even drops of spittle, blood, semen, and the like.  With Brautigan, these are the actual physical remnants of brain tissue, blood splatters, and cerebral fluid of the very brain that gave birth to the ideas he had and the words he wrote, now creating its own narrative on top of those words; and of course that act insured he’d never think or write another word."

Thus inspired - or, more properly, driven - she wrote a poem about it. 

Brautigan's Brains
 
Brains blasted there
upon the page
gray matter gobbed
blood of the poet congealed
this grotesque palimpsest
last words concealed
beneath the blood
shattered neurons
glial cells unglued
glopped, splattered

A text of rage coagulated
there upon the page.

Axons impel thought to take
that fatal fiery leap
across synapse into act
fiction into fact.

Atoms smash against the skull
the neural net tattered warp and woof
the brain that strings the words extruded
globbed, fragmented, spattered
last words occluded by the final proof

The text of rage coagulated
there upon the page.

It will come as no surprise to those who knew him that the late Peter Howard of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, CA was in the middle of all this.

"Peter sold the papers to TBL, and even he was a bit dodgy when I asked him about it." she wrote to Booktryst. "When Peter sold the typescript, he said he was going to make TBL buy one whether they wanted to or not." (Pure Peter).

He may have been dodgy then but it didn't prevent Peter Howard from later validating the story by literally putting his imprimatur on it.

"Some years ago," Phillips told me, "Peter sold a limited edition signed typescript of this poem [ten copies], printed over a photo of Brautigan’s face, with the title Apoptosis: or Brautigan’s Brains" [2002]. He later published her poem Nigga in the Woodpile (2008).

And what does the Bancroft Library think about the situation?

"I get the sense," she continued,  "that even now they don’t want people to know what’s on those mss. pages (to my knowledge, the catalog description doesn’t mention this, or didn’t when I last saw it a long time ago) because their attitude was so squirrely and obfuscatory when I began asking questions, which is why I was driven to call the coroner, then send for the coroner’s report (ghastly, a tragic death).

"TBL was (is?) bent on denying the fact of what is undeniably there.  I honestly don’t understand why they wouldn’t either encase those specific pages in mylar or remove them for safekeeping and substitute photocopies.  This for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I don’t think your average literary researcher accessing the ms. would be thrilled to learn that he or she had been unknowingly fingering somebody’s brain matter...What about possible pathogens?  What if he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?"

Anyone wishing to go trout fishing in the Brautigan papers at the Bancroft Library may first wish to don waders and elbow-length surgical gloves. Or a Hazmat suit.
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Mille grazie to J.J. Phillips.

Brautigan's Brains reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

A tip o' the hat to Andrei Codrescu.
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Of related interest:

Novelist Richard Brautigan's Unrecorded One Day Marriage Certificate Surfaces.
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Femme Fatales Go Down Under

Original Lobby Card From
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
(All Images Courtesy of The Justice and Police Museum, Sydney.)

Call her a wicked woman, a bad girl, a gun moll, a dangerous doll, a vamp, a vixen, a Jezebel, or a black widow. That seductive siren whose steamy sex appeal hides a heart as cold, dark, and deadly as a .38. With her dangerous curves, blood-red lips, and come hither looks, she's death in four-inch stilettos. But does this pulp fiction dream-girl-turned-nightmare have anything in common with real-life female criminals? A traveling exhibit created by Sydney's Justice & Police Museum, and now on show at The National Archives of Australia in Canberra, tries to answer that question by comparing the archetypal pop culture Femme Fatale with the real histories of female inmates in New South Wales's Long Bay Gaol from 1914 through 1930.

A Banner Created For The Femme Fatale Exhibit.

Australia has a unique history when it comes to female convicts. The first non-aboriginal women to settle the continent--all 25,000 of them--were convicted criminals deported from Great Britain and forced to live in what was then a penal colony. Despite a British officer's famous branding of these women as "damned whores," most were in fact guilty of minor, non-violent, non-sex-related crimes. such as petty theft, pickpocketing, or shoplifting. The curator of the Femme Fatale exhibit, Nerida Campbell, says nevertheless, "the pairing of criminality and loose sexuality became deeply ingrained in the colonial psyche."

Biblical Femme Fatale Lilith.
Oil On Canvas By John Collier,
1892.

The first section of the exhibit plays off of that pairing by examining the femme fatale in history and popular culture. From Lilith to Eve to Delilah to Cleopatra, women who were mad, bad, and dangerous to know have always been a part of myth, culture, history, and literature. But their high water mark was in the first half of the twentieth century, when detective fiction and the silver screen teamed up to bring us the all-time, world-class, champion glamour-girls gone wrong.

Detective Book Magazine,
Summer 1940.

Dashiell Hammett's Brigid O'Shaunessey (The Maltese Falcon, 1930), and James M. Cain's Cora Papadakis (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1934) and his Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity, 1936), all made the transition from page to screen. A tragic trio of she-devils in the flesh, embodied by Mary Astor, Lana Turner, and Barbara Stanwyck, respectively. All three ended up dancing with the same dark stranger--The Grim Reaper--but only after leading a succession of male saps down primrose path to the gates of hell. And all of this without smudging their lipstick, mussing their marcelled hair, or snagging the silk stockings sheathing their glamorous gams. Their stories are told through vintage pulp paperbacks and detective magazines, and original motion picture ephemera, such as lobby cards and posters. Raymond Chandler's shamus, Phillip Marlowe, knew all too well the irresistible allure of these underworld goddesses with hearts of lead: "I like smooth shiny girls, hard-boiled and loaded with sin."

Real Life Femme Fatale,
Dulcie Markham, ca. 1940.

The real-life femme fatales captured in the mug shots from Long Bay Gaol bear little resemblance to Hollywood's film noir queens. Curator Nerida Campbell, who also wrote a companion book to the Femme Fatale exhibit, sums up the difference: "The seductress we see in films is attractive, independent and intelligent, and uses her sexuality against men who are unable to resist her. The reality for most female criminals turns out to be a hard, dysfunctional and violent life..." But this is not to say that the women featured in the real world section of the show are any less fascinating than their fictional sisters. Film noir's baddest bad girls had nothing on Aussie hooker Dulcie Markham, the "Angel of Death," arrested clad only in her best lingerie, as she chased a client down a city street wielding an axe. When asked what the fuss was about she replied: "The bastard insulted me about [my] price!"

Spicy Detective Stories Magazine,
July 1936.

And the juicy stories don't end with the somewhat temperamental Miss Markham. Who could resist the tale of Iris Webber, "The Most Violent Woman In Sydney," a masochistic lesbian who fell for a young prostitute, and became determined to free the girl she loved from a life of sin. (Or at least a life of sin with men...) The aftermath of this twisted love triangle was a dead pimp, a client with a gunshot wound, and a thug whose wounds from a meat cleaver forced him into a new line of work. His meeting with the lovestruck Miss Webber left him unable to regain the use of his hands.

Eugenia Falleni, 1920.

And what fiction writer could have invented a more bizarre crime story than that of Eugenia Falleni, AKA "Harry Leo Crawford," AKA "The Man/Woman Murderer?" Falleni began successfully passing as a man in her early twenties, and at age 38 made widowed Annie Burkett the first "Mrs. Crawford." Four years later (!) Annie finally discovered that her husband was a "she." It appears she was better off living in blissful ignorance: her charred, battered, and unidentifiable body was found at a Sydney picnic grounds in 1917. Meanwhile, "Harry Crawford," insisting that his wife had left him for "another man," married for a second time, to Elizabeth King Allison. But by 1920 Annie Birkett's name was finally attached to the picnic grounds corpse, and "Harry Crawford" was arrested on suspicion of murder. The jig was finally up when "Harry" asked to be held in the women's wing of Sydney jail, as Eugenia Falleni. Falleni contributed what is undoubtedly the most unusual piece of memorabilia in the Femme Fatale exhibit: the leather dildo she used to keep her two wives in the dark (so to speak) about her gender.

Annie Gunderson, Booked In 1922. The Charge?
Theft Of A Fur Coat From Winn's LTD.,
A Posh Sydney Department Store.

The mug shots in the Femme Fatale exhibition were uncovered at Sydney’s Justice & Police Museum which houses more than 130,000 forensic negatives – originally created by police between 1912 and 1964. Even when dressed in what appears to be their flashiest attire, including fur coats, patent leather Mary-Janes, gaudy faux jewels, and ostrich-plumed hats, these true-life criminals are the antithesis of film noir sirens like Veronica Lake. Most look disheveled, despondent, degraded, and decades older than their years. But the fantasy version of the female criminal still holds a uniquely hypnotic appeal.

Mystery Book Magazine,
Fall 1947.

As Mae West, who knew a thing or two about bad girls, once said: "When women go wrong, men go right after them." Nerida Campbell notes that the even the title of her exhibit has a subtext: "The charm of the French phrase femme fatale disguises its true meaning, 'fatal woman,' just as the glamorous version of female criminality portrayed in literature and cinema of the period belies the unfortunate reality of female offenders."
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Ante Up For This Great Poker Rare Book Library

[ANON]. It's All In The Draw.
[London]: C.E.H. Brelsford and C.W. Dimick, 1895.
(All Images Courtesy Of Natalie Galustian Rare Books.)

Finding yourself flush with cash these days? Feeling like you've hit the jackpot with a big deal, and there's no limit to your bankroll? Got that winning feeling that only comes when you're really in the chips? Then you can bet your bottom dollar you'll find something that's just aces at London rare book dealer Natalie Galustian's sale of her personal library of books, photographs, and prints on poker and gambling.

London Rare Book Dealer
And Poker Aficionado,
Natalie Galustian.

Oxford-educated Shakespearean scholar and newly-elected President of the International Federation of Poker (IPF), Anthony Holden, has written a terrific introduction for the "Poker" section of Galustian's catalog, All In (.pdf file). In it he describes her rare books and first editions on the card game (or as Holden prefers to call it the "mind-sport") as: "a compendious cornucopia of sumptuous delights, painstakingly gathered...in what has clearly been an authentic labour of love, now a source of infinite pleasure to us mere player-readers."

British Writer, Scholar,
And Poker Player,
Anthony Holden.

Poker, with its flair for the dramatic, colorful characters, and legendary reversals of fortune, has always been a writer's game, appearing in the work of such literary luminaries as Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Bret Harte, Sinclair Lewis, Ambrose Bierce, and Henry James. And as Anthony Holden states: "Perhaps because of its mythical link with writers, poker is one of the few sports to have spawned a literature almost as rich and colourful as its own exotic history."

BALLARD, Martha C. Shakespeare On Poker.
Denver: The Ballard Publishing Company, 1906.

The 125 titles Galustian has assembled here prove his point, ranging from classics like The Complete Poker Player by John Blackbridge (1880) and The Odds Against Me by John Scarne (1966) to such arcane titles as L. B. 'Tutor' Scherer's poetic paean to the game, Reminiscing In Rhyme (1956) and Martha C. Ballard's Shakespeare On Poker (1906). But the book which Holden calls "the jewel in this mighty collection's mightier crown" is Robert Cumming Schenk's Rules for Playing Poker (1880). Schenk was an American Civil War General for the Union Army, and the US Ambassador to Queen Victoria's Britain, and Holden writes he has "always coveted" this title, which is "the first book devoted to the rules of draw poker."

SCHENCK, General Robert Cumming.
Rules For Playing Poker.
London: Privately Printed, 1880.

The second section of All In "covers a wide spectrum of books on gambling, casino games, and game theory." (Both Anthony Holden and Natalie Galustian insist that poker is a game of skill, not chance, and as such should not be considered "gambling.") This part of the catalog also includes some real gems, including an 1847 edition of The Greeks featuring six hand-colored plates by George Cruickshank; a neo-Latin poem, Carmen de Ludo Magistri by Johannes Faber, printed in 1504, making it one of the oldest modern works on gambling; and a "heavily annotated horse race betting card from "the poet laureate of drinkers and gamblers, Charles Bukowski."

BLACKBRIDGE, John.
The Complete Poker Player.
New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1880.

Natalie Galustian writes in her introduction to the gambling section of the catalog that she began her "collecting adventure" with these books, but soon found herself increasingly fascinated by playing and reading about poker. Speaking of the books on her favorite game, or if you prefer "mind-sport," she says: "The collection traces the development of the game through the 19th century and 20th centuries, and shows how the wealth, quality and scholarly nature of the writing on poker proves it is a game of skill, not chance...I would like to get poker players to become more interested in the history of their game, and convince them that collecting the books that conspired to shape the modern games of poker is a great thing to do."

[POKER LITHOGRAPHS]
A collection of six 19th century lithographs,
depicting poker scenes.
New York: Truth Company, 1895.

She ends her preface with words that prove she knows whereof she speaks in terms of both gaming and book collecting: "It has been a pleasure to be the temporary curator of this wonderful collection and it will be a great shame to see it go. But, as all gamblers know, you've got to lose everything so you can do it all over again." The books, photographs, and prints from the All In catalog will be on display at Natalie Galustian Rare Books in London through the end of July 2010.
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