humor

Hardcover. NY, The Century Co., reprint, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray-green cloth lettereed and decorated in gilt and black. 239 pages, Illustrated with 36 drawings by Frederic Dorr Steele. Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 ?- April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century. Primarily a short story writer this is one of his few novels. A very clean, bight copy.

Hardcover. London, Michael Joseph, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly edgeworn dust jacket, 124 pages. Punchbowl Farms' largest crop may not be cats, but the Siamese and Burmese cat families who have the run of the farm are certainly its most delightful product. With love humor, and insight, Monica Edwards introduces some o the numerous felines she has welcomed into her home on the farm. B&w photo illustrations.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, reprint, 1860, Hardcover in embossed maroon cloth with gilt lettering on the spine, 505 pages plus publisher's ads. First published in 1849, a Victorian novel that follows the Caxton family: scholarly Austin working on his grand history, his wife Kitty, his brother Roland the Captain, and Austin's son Pisistratus who narrates. Their quiet country life shifts when young Pisistratus becomes secretary to a parliamentary leader, falls for his employer's daughter, and faces heartbreak alongside his father's financial troubles. This gentle, humorous family portrait marked a turning point in Victorian fiction. A light tan stain at the very corner tip of the pages, small price on front fly leaf, otherwise a tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st thus, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 64 pages. New Yorker cartoonist (and creator of the altogether ooky Addams Family characters) Charles Addams tampers with tradition to great effect in The Charles Addams Mother Goose, first published in 1967, and now reissued as a deluxe edition. While Ms. Goose's original nursery rhymes remain unchanged, Addams casts his spell on a selected few poems with new visual twists. A less wholesome, more anemic Mistress Mary has never been seen, and her bare-lightbulb-lit basement garden of mushrooms and heads of "pretty maids all in a row" is quite unsettling. Jack Sprat and his wife are, of course, cannibals. Nine-day-old porridge is disgusting... so naturally a witch is the porridge preparer, and goblins are the only ones who would like it "nine days old." Humpty Dumpty's story, on the other hand, feels a little cheerier than the original: rather than leaving the egg irreparably broken, the illustrator shows a dinosaur hatching! Tee Addams, Charles Addams's wife, writes an insightful introduction for this lovely, oversized edition, and the book closes with a scrapbook of family photos and pictures of Addams's earlier work. Kids familiar with Mother Goose's rhymes will be delighted (and perhaps only slightly terrified) by Addams's playful interpretations.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st illust., 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red embossed covers with gilt decoration of two children in profile. One volume from the publisher's 10 volume series, 508 pages. Notable for the full color plates by H.I. Bacharach, 16 in all. Illustrated endpapers of young children in field of flowers (by another artist). Interior clean, very good.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st illust., 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red embossed covers with gilt decoration of two children in profile. One volume from the publisher's 10 volume series, 442 pages. Notable for the full color plates by H.I. Bacharach, 16 in all. Illustrated endpapers of young children in field of flowers (by another artist). Owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise interior clean, very good.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 362 pages. By the celebrated author of A Dream in Polar Fog, a collection of the myths and stories of Yuri Rytkheu's own family that is at once a moving history of the Chukchi people who inhabit the northern shores of the Bering Sea and a beautiful cautionary tale rife with conflict, human drama, and humor. We meet fantastic characters: Nau, the mother of the human race; Rau, her half-whale husband; and Rytkheu's own grandfather, fated to be an intrepid traveler, far-ranging whaler, living ethnographic exhibit, and the last shaman of Uelen. The Chukchi Bible moves through vast Arctic tundra, sea, and sky - and to places deep within ourselves--introducing readers, in vivid prose, to an extraordinary mythology and a resilient people. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cleveland, World Publishing Company, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 336 pages. Hardcover. Previous owners name on front endpaper. Includes cartoonists: John Held, Jr., Charles Keene, George Herriman, A. B. Frost, Peter Arno, Saul Steinberg, Charles Addams, Virgil Partch, William Steig, Gerald Scarfe, Shel Silverstein, Tomi Ungerer, and more. Black & white illustrations. Dust jacket with chipping along edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

London, Published at the Punch Office, 1st thus, 1846, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 252 pages of text. Full tan leather binding with elaborate decorative gilt tooling on spine and gilt ruling on edges of boards. Maroon leather spine labels. Original purple publisher's cloth is bound in at the rear (front cover and spine only). Title page is printed in red and black. Frontis portrait and title page engraving by Cruikshank. The first one volume edition. The classic parody of the Commentaries, it went through numerous English and American editions. Cruikshank was the leading English illustrator and caricaturist of his day. He is best known for work for William Hone and Charles Dickens. Lovely copy.

Hardcover. NY, Benjamin Blom, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light orange cloth with brown titles on spine. Traces the history of the time-honored farce, featuring Pulcinella, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pantaleone, and other traditionsl characters, from Roman comedy to Cruikshank's Punch & Judy. Originally published in 1912, this new edition adds 46 pages of illustrations and a folding color frontispiece. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Princeton WI, Remco/Kitchen Sink Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 95 pages in color, black cloth covers, bright and unclipped dust jacket. Introduction by Art Spiegelman. Cliff Sterrett was one of the outstanding newspaper cartoon artists in the formative period of this 20th Century art: a skilled draftsman, borderline (and sometimes over the line) surrealist, and humorist. Polly and Her Pals is now considered one of the masterpieces of American comic strips of the Interwar period, both for its graphic qualities and its storytelling and humor. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. Kitchen Sink Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 95 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Extensive color illustrations throughout. Foxing to dust jacket interior, several pages, and top edge. Some soiling to fly leafs. Otherwise clean, tight copy. Cliff Sterrett was one of the outstanding newspaper cartoon artists in the formative period of this 20th Century art: a skilled draftsman, borderline (and sometimes over the line) surrealist, and humorist. DUE TO SIZA AND WEIGHT, This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 344 pages. As the 1970s wind down, the last two recurring Peanuts characters have fallen into place: Snoopy's brother Spike and the youngest Van Pelt sibling, Rerun. But that doesn't mean Schulz's creativity has diminished. For instance, in an epic five-week sequence, when Charlie Brown, found guilty by the EPA of biting the Kite-Eating tree, he goes on the lam and ends up coaching the "Goose Eggs," a group of diminutive baseball players, Austin, Ruby, Leland, and -did you know there was a second Black Peanuts character, aside from Franklin?-Milo. Also: a tennis-playing Snoopy ends up reluctantly teamed with the extreme Type "A" athlete Molly Volley... who then reappears later in the book, nowfacing off against her nemesis, "Crybaby" Boobie. All in addition to the usual cast of beloved characters.

Hardcover. NY, Wings Books, reprint, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, contains Without Feathers, Getting Even, and Side Effects. 473 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Minneapolis MN, The Country Press, 1st, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in marbled green boards with orange front label, in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 28 pages on outhouses and privies in a humorous vein. No date but probably the early 1930s.

Softcover. Louisville KY, Sarabande Books, 4th pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 40 pages, b&w photos. Lydia Davis is mathematician, philosopher, sculptor, jeweler, and scholar of the minute. Few writers map the process of thought as well as she, few perceive with such charged intelligence. The Cows is a close study of the three much-loved cows that live across the road from her. The piece, written with understated humor and empathy, is a series of detailed observations of the cows on different days and in different positions, moods, and times of the day. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, brown cloth stamped in gilt, 222 pages with line drawings by the author. In a very worn and chipped dust jacket. "Mr. Day here sets forth in his characteristic vein his observations about men and human nature and books--talks about Humpty-Dumpty, Prometheus, Shaw, Fabre and Noah--money, the nebular hypothesis, legs, cows and marriage. Also an attempt to describe our world to a fish." Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards, unpaginated. A collection of original Partch cartoons all about hunting, fishing, golf and other sports. Introduction by Gurney Williams, cartoon editor at Collier's. Clean copy, light wear, mild fading to edges of cover.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover. A generous collection of b&w cartoons by Dedini whose work was featured in The New Yorker, Esquire and in Playboy. Dust jacket is a bit worn, light chipping. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. The author's humorous look at professional golf, it's stars and off-beat personalities. Mild soil to the dust jacket, no markings.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy boards, 56 pages, illustrated in color by David Roberts. A tyrannical teacher gets her just due in a delightfully subversive, outrageously funny tale by Newbery Medal winner Paul Fleischman. Miss Breakbone hates kids. Especially the time-squandering, mindwandering, doodling, dozing dunderheads in her class. But when she confiscates Junkyard's crucial find, she finally goes too far. Enter Wheels (and his souped-up bike with forty-eight extra gears), Pencil (who can draw anything from memory), Spider (look up and you'll find him), and their fellow misfits in a spectacular display of teamwork aimed at teaching Miss Breakbone a lesson she won't soon forget. Roberts' drawings are hilariously appropriate. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, NBM, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Early b&w comic strips. Mutt and Jeff was the first successful daily comic strip; before it, the funnies were Sunday features. It debuted in 1907, however, as A. Mutt, limning the follies of lanky racetrack gambler Augustus Mutt. Diminutive sidekick Jeff appeared the following year to form a partnership that lasted until the strip's overdue demise in 1983. Mutt and Jeff was the first strip to essay weeks-long story lines, such as a trip to Mexico to join Pancho Villa's revolution. Compared to better-remembered strips of the era, Mutt and Jeff was crudely drawn, yet it captured the nation's fancy. Despite its significance in comics history, Mutt and Jeff is scantly regarded today. By the mid-1920s, Fisher handed creative duties over to ghosts to free up time for the playboy lifestyle that the strip's sizable revenues allowed him. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Beaufort Books, 1st thus, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a price-clipped dust jacket with minor fading, 270 pages. An omnibus volume containing all 5 of Barry Pain's "Eliza" books, written between 1900 and 1913 and, according to Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame), "some of the funniest books in the English language". Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. From Caldecott Medalist Arnold Lobel (1933-1987) comes a brand-new collection of rhyming stories about frogs and toads. Discovered by his daughter, Adrianne Lobel, The Frogs and Toads All Sang has the same warmth, compassion, and humor that is found in his best-loved work. Brimming with sweet silliness, this new book reminds us why Arnold Lobel's characters continue to be so popular years after debut.