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A 19th C. Rare Book With The Worst Reviews You'll Ever Read
by Stephen J. GertzIt is, perhaps, the most appallingly bad epic poem to have ever been written in English, comprised of 384 interminable pages of doggerel verse devoid of any literary merit, an opus...
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The Strange Suicide Of An Early 20th C. Female Rare Book Binder
by Stephen J. GertzOn Sunday morning, December 29, 1913, at 11:30AM the body of Mary Effingham Chatfield, 42, an art bookbinder with work commissioned by many of New York's most eminent book collectors...
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Has An Unrecorded Thackeray MS Gift Book Been Discovered?
by Stephen J. GertzHand-lettered titlepage.A small manuscript book with original art purportedly written and drawn by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), the great nineteenth century English...
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James Thurber Illustrates Poetry
by Stephen J. GertzThe four original illustrations by celebrated American humorist, cartoonist, author, and journalist, James Thurber (1894-1961) to accompany Charles Kingsley's poem The Sands o'...
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Terry Southern Talks William S. Burroughs, Easy Rider, Rip Torn, And The New...
by Stephen J. GertzAn extraordinary cache of manuscripts, signed autograph and typed letters, ephemera, and awards from the estate of novelist, essayist, satirist, and screenwriter Terry Southern...
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The Sorrowful Saga of Jack Ruby's Pants, Now At Auction
by Stephen J. Gertz Snap your suspenders auction attenders, Jack Ruby's pants are for sale.A pair of trousers personally owned and worn by the man who fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of JFK,...
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Johathan Swift Asks For a Job
by Stephen J. GertzA two-page signed autograph letter by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) dated April 15, 1735 to an unidentified Lord (i.e. Lionel Cranfield Sackville, the 1st Duke of Dorset and Lord...
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Meet The Flamboyant Lady-Like Gentlemen of 1840
by Stephen J. GertzIt's a scarce little sucker, a rarely seen Leech. It's The Fiddle Faddle Fashion Book and Beau Monde à La Française, Enriched with Numerous Highly Colored Figures of Lady-Like...
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The Bible Of Unconscious Buffoonery
by Stephen J. GertzExtra engraved titlepage.Imagine that you've written a book that no one will publish; it's considered over-long and looney. So, to pump-up its importance, impress, and tacitly...
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Take My Wife, Please! The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills Slain In This 19th...
by Stephen J. GertzThe following was anonymously written by Percival Leigh in 1840 and is extracted from The Fiddle Faddle Fashion Book.It is, in essence, a c. 1960 comedy routine in deadly wry 19th...
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Leonard Cohen: You Do Not Have To Love Me At Auction (Or Anywhere Else)
by Stephen J. GertzA copy of Canadian poet and songwriter-singer Leonard Cohen's poem, You Do Not Have To Love Me is being offered by PBA Galleries in its Beats, Counterculture & the Avant Garde,...
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What Shakespeare Ate On Menu At 47th California Rare Book Fair
by Stephen J. GertzThe California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Pasadena Convention Center next weekend, February 7-9, 2014. Now in its 47th year, the Fair will celebrate the 450th...
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Foujita's Great Rare Book Of Cats Est. $60K-$80K At Bonham's
by Stephen J. GertzA copy of Michael Joseph's Book of Cats, published in New York by Covici Friede, 1930, with drawings by Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968), is being offered by Bonham's in its Fine Books...
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Afghan Protest Against Soviet Occupation Looks Familiar In Scarce Posters
by Stephen J. GertzA set of nine dramatic anti-Soviet propaganda posters lithographed on thin paper and published in Pakistan c.1980-81 by the Internal Islamic Fronts/Afghanistan is being offered by...
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This 1898 Lost Gem Of Oriental Romanticism Is Intoxicating
by Stephen J. GertzThe following is my Historical Note to a new translation of Haschisch by Fritz Lemmermayer, originally issued in 1898 and now published for the first time in English by Process Media...
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The Great Gadsby: A Rare Book Written The Hard Way, No "E"s
by Stephen J. GertzToday is Lipogram Day on Booktryst, and because it is Lipogram Day we celebrate Gadsby, a novel from 1939 whose sole claim to fame is that of its 50,110 words not a single one...
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Death Makes A Lousy Nanny, Etc.
by Stephen J. GertzExtra engraved title-page featuringManny, Moe, and Jack, the last of the Graces.He can run but he can't hide. - Joe Louis on ring opponent Billy Conn.What's up with Death? What's it...
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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Together
by Stephen J. GertzIn 1929 Cecil Aldin (1870-1935), an artist with a passion for dogs, published Sleeping Partners, a charming series of twenty colored sketches of his two pooches, Micky, an Irish...
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A Rare Book's Roll-Call of Dishonest, Immoral, and Unusual People
by Stephen J. GertzIn 1813, James Caulfield published a new, expanded, three-volume edition of his Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the...
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The 36 Miseries Of Reading And Writing In 1806
by Stephen J. Gertz"TO THE MISERABLE CHILDREN of Misfortune, wheresoever found, and whatsoever enduring — ye who, arrogating to yourselves a kind of sovereignty of suffering, maintain that all the...
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