Rare Book Monthly

Book Catalogue Reviews - December - 2008 Issue

Weird Science, Religion, Poetry, Etc. from Garrett Scott, Bookseller

Dr. Burke worried about the health of everyone but his nurse, whom he attempted to kill.

Dr. Burke worried about the health of everyone but his nurse, whom he attempted to kill.


Richard Griffin is something of a celebrity in then field of eccentric and bad poets. Item 84 is his The Melancholy Yak and Other Poems, published in 1917. Among his verses is the classic: "While upon earth I was living, / Fridays, I ran about giving / Catholic Wops hungry young / Sandwiches, made of beef tongue." Weren't Friday's reserved for fish? $150. If you like this, the good news is that Scott has a couple more Griffin classics available for sale.

Dr. William P. Burke offered a mix of sensible dietary advice and quackery circa the early 1900s in The Constructive and Remedial Properties of Food. He recommended a natural diet, although he strongly condemned root beer. Burke ran Burke's Sanitarium in Santa Rosa, California, but his career was disrupted when he was convicted of attempting to kill one his nurses by blowing her up as she slept in a tent. Item 33. $50.

Charles Pease was an early anti-smoking crusader. The New York dentist has been credited with advancing legislation to outlaw smoking in subways and other public places. Item 139 is his The Smoking Rector, published in 1936. Despite his success in combating smoking, Scott notes. "(h)is efforts against ginger ale, meat, vinegar, and lollipops, however, met with only mixed success." $25.

Item 92 is Stories, by Jessie Heckman, published in 1896. She mixes true stories, such as an 1894 tour of the White House, with the fantastic like an invasion of giants: "when the little girl and her mother saw all the giants coming, she went to the barn and called the hired man and he came in and brought his Gattling gun and gattled and gattled until he killed all the giants, but the big one" [were the other giants small?]. Miss Heckman can be forgiven her childish prose. She was only six at the time. Jessie was the daughter of Chicago attorney Wallace Heckman, and while we cannot be certain, believe she grew up to be Jessie Heckman Herschl, who graduated from the University of Chicago and, half a century later, was writing articles about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. This copy is signed in a juvenile signature by Miss Heckman dated July 20, 1896. Had she become a famous author, this book would probably be extraordinarily expensive, but she did not, so it is priced at $50.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Geek Week
    2-17 July | New York
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Buzz Aldrin's FLOWN Apollo 11 Crew-Signed NASA Manned Spacecraft Center Cover. $15,000 to $20,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Lunar Surface Flown Mission Emblem Presented to Tom Stafford by John Young. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Albert Einstein. Typed Letter Signed ("A. Einstein."), to Ann Morrisett, Affirming a Pacifist's Right to Self-Defense, March 21, 1952. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Geek Week
    2-17 July | New York
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Operating and Maintenance Manual for the BINAC Binary Automatic Computer Built for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. Philadelphia, 1949. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 17: Steve Jobs Apple Computer Business Card, c. 1977. $5,000 to $8,000.
    Sotheby’s, July 15: Extensive Chronology of Spacecraft From Apollo to Skylab, Signed by a Member of Every Crewed Apollo Flight and the Commanders of Each Skylab Mission. $5,000 to $8,000.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800

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