[Rarebooks] FS - Gelett Burgess, The Maxims Of Methuselah, signed

Michael Watson archetype at 20ants.com
Thu Jan 28 22:57:17 EST 2010


FS - Gelett Burgess, The Maxims Of Methuselah, signed

Gelett Burgess
The Maxims Of Methuselah
Frederick A. Stokes, 1907, 1st Edition (?), Hardcover, 12mo  7" - 7½"
tall, 108 pp., G+/-

The subtitle: "Being the Advice given by the Patriarch in his Nine
Hundred Sixty and Ninth Year to his Great Grandson at Shem's Coming of
Age in regard to women." SIGNED by the author "With the compliments
of/Gelett Burgess/1907" who included a drawn figure (monk? friar?)
wearing a belted robe and sporting a halo.

A humorous take on Methuselah's accumulated wisdom about women from this
US humorist and illustrator (1866-1951) who wrote the famous rhyme "I
never saw a purple cow..." Written in an archaic, quasi-Biblical style.

Illustrations, page decorations, and cover design by Louis D. Fancher.
Color frontis and plates appear transitional, showing both Art Nouveau
and Art Deco influences. Page decorations are strongly Egyptian revival.

Green cloth spine. Illustrated covers, paper over boards. No DJ,
believed as-issued. Front pastedown has small clipping from a
bookseller's catalog pasted down, the clipping describing this specific
copy.

Significant wear to all edges, corners, spine ends. Covers soiled.

Interior is clean. G+/- $75.00 USD Postpaid via USPS Media Rate in the
US. Others please inquire.

http://www.20ants.com/images/covers/462.jpg
-- 

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[Books of great authors] are regarded as part of the necessary
furniture of the house -- not of the mind; and having been duly and
dutifully bought they are taught to know their place on the appointed
shelf. They are taken as read. There are few men now who, when a new
book is published, read an old one. - An anonymous 19th century cynic







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