I spend way too much time (and money) in dusty old bookstores and on bookfinder.com. SAnd I have encountered some wonderfully jaw-droppiong book titles—OK, you all know I have a dirty, easily amused mind. here are some actual book titles I have run across: Jim Phenix’s Big Bulge (an 1890s penny dreadful) Dorothy Dainty’s Gay Times (a 1908 children’s book, and a corking good title for an underground newspaper!) Lively Lays for Dreary Days (an 1880s book of children’s poetry, which I would kill to get my hands on) The Faggot-House, by Sarah Bowditch (1855) Mistress Goodwife Entertains the Fairy (a booklet from the early 1800s) Born in a Beer Garden: Sundry Ejaculations by Christopher Morley
and my two favorite cookbooks, both c1940: Be Bold with Bananas, and How to Turn a Trick a Day with Biquik
Be Bold with Bananas and How to Turn a Trick a Day with Biquik remind me of the wonderful book The Gallery of Regrettable Food, which pretty much skewers recipes and cooking tips from that era. You can see the book and read about a whole lot of other hysterical Americana at Lileks.com You should enjoy, particularly, the old postcards of New York City section.
I remember seeing on his site a few months ago numerous photographs of this atrocious motel, somewhere in the heartland … Wisconin maybe. It was decorated in mind-boggling bad taste. I believe shag carpet was heavily involved, frequently on the walls and ceiling. But I can’t find it now, nor can I remember the name.
Eve, is Lively Lays for Dreary Days a subtitle, by chance? I haven’t seen this one anywhere (including WorldCat and Library of Congress), and I can usually find almost any title. And do you have an author?
I saw Lively Lays for Dreary Days listed in the bibliography of a book called Little Wide-Awake, a compilation from old children’s books. I’ve been searching for the book itself for years, with no luck . . .
Ellen, I adore Lileks, and his Gallery of Regrettable Food was the New Year’s present for most of my friends last year!
Alas, you may have to kill to get your hands on it! (Or, for a little less violent method, travel to the U.K.)
I see the full title of the book you mention is Little wide-awake; an anthology from Victorian children’s books and periodicals in the collection of Anne and Fernand G. Renier.
The Renier collection currently resides in the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Their policy on access to this collection:
Readers consulting material in the Renier Collection are subject to the rules pertaining to all Special Collections. In particular, please note that items from the Renier Collection may not be photocopied.
So even a photocopy is unavailable at present. Good luck!
Well, nertz! You’d think more than one copy of the damned book had been printed back in 1880-whatever. But noething has turned up on bookfinder.com. I gues that title has made it irresistible to collectors . . .
Now to find me a copy of Jim Phenix’s Big Bulge . . .
You know I love you, dear Eve, so I have to wonder why you didn’t take the road of innuendo with this one. Wouldn’t it have been easier, and so much more gratifying, to say something like “Now to try and get a hold of Jim Phenix’s Big Bulge?”
I have a copy of “Hippies, Drugs, and Promiscuity” that I picked up at a library sale. I have no idea what the book is actually trying to say about the phenomenon, but the title was well worth .10 I paid for it.
Thanks, RealityChuck. I’d never heard this (not that I collect slurs or anything).
I came back to post an interesting site I found, for general edification, when doing a search to verify Chuck’s assertion: Racial Slur Database. Interesting domain name, there. And “Dubya” is included!
OK, Eve, this one bugged me enough to do some more research. As you said, there had to have been more than one copy printed!
First of all, it helps if we are searching for the right book! I got a copy of Little Wide-Awake from the library to find out the details about Lively Lays for Dreary Days, only to find out that it is not a book title, but only the title of one section of a book! The name of the book in which it is contained is, according to the bibliograpy, Birdie’s Book, published in London in 1880 by George Routledge and Sons. There are other headings with similar rhyming titles in the book, such as: Little Mites for Tiny Sprites, Tit Bits for Tiny Wits and so on.
Next, I turned to Library of Congress and WorldCat to find out any more bibliographic details if possible. Unfortunately, there were still no exact matches. I went back to the online catalog of the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the data had been added yet for that book. No dice there either. So I went back to WorldCat to see if I could find any close matches.
Here is the closest I could find:
Little Birdie’s picture book
by Joseph Martin Kronheim
published in London by George Routledge and Sons in 1879?
(question mark in database indicating date uncertain)
The bibliography in Little Wide-Awake indicated 24 pages, the record in WorldCat indicated 73 pages of text and 65 of illustration. Who knows if the bibliog. data is correct in either place?
The only library possessing a copy is the University of California, Los Angeles. If you wish to try for an Interlibrary Loan, the accession number (OCLC) is 30427147 or you may just want to call the library and find out if it is the book you are looking for.
Good luck! Maybe it will turn up on Bookfinder soon.
So, now what was this about Jim Phenix’s Big Bulge?
