WWII was a great boon for publishing in many ways.    In the interest of entertaining soldiers abroad, exceptions were made in the paper ration process for publishers, so long as they printed books that would be of interest to servicemen during their off-hours.  Publishers brought cheap, portable paperback books to the front lines throughout the world, but encountered the question: what do they want to read? The Department of Defense made arrangements for Pocket and Penguin to publish useful books, like aircraft spotter manuals, and much of what sold well were the publisher’s regular best-seller lists.  However, the availability of approachable literature to the soldiers was creating a huge new generation of casual readers.   One of my favorite genres to really see growth due to WWII are the comedy paperbacks.

WWII didn’t create the genre, however.  The bread-and-butter books of publishers weren’t always the big-name authors, but were instead small collections of previously-available content repackaged for the mass market.   1931’s The Pocket Book of Boners, edited and illustrated by none other than Theodore Geisel himself, had already been selling well before it shipped out to PXs around the world.  After it hit the soldier’s outposts, by 1942 it was #4 on Pocket’s Army best-seller list, behind a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book (also an anthology of previously released material), Nana by Emile Zola (already over 60 years old by that time),  and the dictionary.  When thefreely-distributed, cheaply-made Armed Services Editions were being planned, books of humor were the third most numerous titles of any other genre.   Bennett Cerf, an expert in storytelling and bookselling, quickly assembled The Pocket Book of War Humor and sent it to the presses. These light-hearted, low-effort books of humor helped our soldiers get through their tours of duty, and when they returned stateside they brought their taste in literature with.

This burst in quick, cheap wit continued beyond the end of the world war.   Bennett Cerf continued publishing his collections of funny micro-stories and brief punchlines, while others got into the act as well.   Magazines also saw their popularity grow, and their need for short, entertaining articles bred a generation of witty writers well-suited for an anthology of their comedy bits.  Kermit Schafer epitomized the genre of re-publishing previously used funny bits by building it into a publishing empire with his Bloopers series of books and albums.  Nearly all the content was gleaned or recreated from radio broadcasts, had previously been published in his syndicated column, and much of the content between books was repeated from previous editions as well.   One facet of humor books that continued to see strength that would soon dwindle were the race-based joke books, who, for the most part, repeated the same jokes with a different nationality filled in the blanks.  The 1950s’ public attitude was focused on white picket fences and apple pie, with little tolerance for ‘fringe’ content, but as the decade began to close, writers were beginning to reflect the growing social iniquities via satire.

One of the earliest were the Mad Magazine, who published books under Ballantine, bringing their edgy humor and satire to paperback form.   Books like Mac Bird, Golden’s Only in America books, and handfuls of Harvard/National Lampoon books gave humor paperbacks an edge that had been largely missing during their earlier years.   The interest in censorship still hovered over much of the media, resulting in the Comic Code, varying enforcement of the Hay’s Code, and the introduction of movie age-ratings.   However, books tended to be more immune due to their status as ‘literature’.  The race-based joke books also took either a self-referential tone, or later evolved into non-race  books like ‘blonde jokes’ or ‘redneck jokes’, and moved away from general interest into naughtier ‘party’ books for adults.   While some books kept their innocuous form and cater to a more juvenile audience, the satire of the 60s and 70s was most decidedly adult in nature and subtle references.

Those more innocuous humor books, some repeating re-worded jokes that were indistinguishable from Bennett Cerf’s content in the 1940s, continued to find their audience among children.    Services like Scholastic’s SBS brought small catalogs of cheap books into student’s hands on a monthly basis, and those title lists often included more than one collection of jokes or funny comics.  While most are completely unremarkable, Scholastic had a knack for selling timely books, like the Pac Man themed humor on the left.   While the jokes were largely juvenile and simple, it matched their audience’s sentibilities, and Scholastic joke books are quite numerous.

The wide appreciation for humor books and their cheap production expense has created a collectible market with an enormous amount of items to collect.    Particularly in the fifties and sixties, the humor books from large presses were produced in enormous numbers, and largely survived well, and cost remains quite low.   Somewhat rarer books, like the early Mad or the Harvard Lampoon books, have a higher demand and were produced in relatively low quantities compared to the usual mass-market runs.  Still, they can usually be found for lower prices than their rarer cousins, and many were produced as series, encouraging a collector to obtain every volume, rather than any single one.

Back in February I posted 13 Fascinating Clippings From 1957, which included this bit:

In a feature called May We Present, we learn of the miracle of dog obedience via Blanche Saunders (featured with her poodles).

“Miss Saunders’s talents are now so much in demand that getting your dog into one of her classes is roughly comparable to getting your son into Harvard.”

Well, at least it was easier than getting your daughter in.

And then I heard from Beverly. Her niece Lisa found the post and contacted Beverly to let her know — because Blanche was Beverly’s great aunt (and therefore Lisa’s great great aunt). This is what she wrote:

We don’t have many photos or much background material, so the items below were so meaningful. I’m so glad you have a hobby that takes you through old magazines! You have have come across my mother Joan Saunders, who also trained poodles and had her own poodle shop in Manhattan.

One never knows how one is going to connect with others. And isn’t the Web fabulous!

The Web is indeed fabulous! I think I may have been even more thrilled than Beverly; for while it certainly is fun to connect with people, it’s super-bonus-point-time when my junk gets validated for having a purpose.

I asked Beverly if I could share her story; she replied, “By all means, share the story, Deanna.” And sent along the following information:

I am rather pleased for my great Aunt Blanche, who was quite an unusual, accomplished woman way back when women were stuck in “little boxes.” She was a Canadian, by the way, from Petitcodiac, New Brunswick. How she got to the elegant realms of Manhattan and a townhouse in the east Fifties must have been quite a story—one that she took with her. She had the first (and for years the only) poodle shop in that New York townhouse in addition to running Carillon Kennels. Katharine Cornell, the Bennett sisters (Constance and Joan), Gov. of New York Tom Dewey and a slew of celebrities and members of Eastern Upper Crust were among her clientele. I attach a document with some other background that you might find of interest.

This is some of the information she sent; I include it for any others who are interested in Blanche Saunders & poodles:

Catharine C. Reiley, “Poodles in obedience”, Mackey J. Irick, The New Poodle, 6th ed. (New York: Howell Book House, 1986), [includes] an account of the 10,000 miles 10-week “trailer trek” across North America during the fall of 1937 by Helene Whitehouse Walker (founder of the sport in North America, and charter member of the Poodle Club of America) and her then-assistant, the now-legendary trainer, instructor, and author, Blanche Saunders–with three Standard Poodles–to popularize the then-new sport.

…Saunders died in 1964; her memory is honoured each year at the Poodle Club of America’s National Specialty when a trophy in her name is awarded to the highest-scoring Poodle in the Open B class.

So it certainly would be fair to say that Blanche Saunders helped put the “standard” in poodles. *wink*

Beverly signed her email saying, “And thank you again. I’m certain that wherever my aunt’s spirit is, she is enjoying this connection.”

Now doesn’t that just make collecting, scanning and sharing seem so important & vital? Who knows what keys you & your collection hold to someone else’s history. So get out your stuff & share it in the Collectors Quest Community — I just know someone out there is going to be thrilled that you did.

Collectors are often accused of being a materialistic lot; but as collections are not just made up of objects, how can that be?

Nearly two years ago I wrote how, “Somewhere in time this object ceased to be just an object but became a symbol of something more, something larger than just itself.” Not long after, I talked about collections in context. But at a very simple level, a collection is a set of memories, on display and ready to be shared.

Collections may start with an heirloom, something personal from your past, a thing “just snapped-up” in an impulse — but along the way they transform from a set of objects. They represent more than spoils of your hunting, but the path you took. Collections document your own personal journey.

Old Stuffed Toys

My little accumulation of ratty-old-cuddlies didn’t begin with buying anything. It began with friends from my childhood, like “Tigger” shown in this photo.

“Tigger” is a sawdust stuffed tiger. He’s faded, some of his fur is worn away with love, and he’s been sewn-up several times at the seam along his back. Even if he was a Steiff, he’d likely have no “value” due to his condition.

But to me, every bald patch, every stitch, has a story.

That larger patch at the back is evidence of 8 year-old-me chewing gum in bed — I had to cut the grape-yuck out of him in the morning so my folks wouldn’t know. Those multi-colored stitches down his back are the proof of the improvement of my sewing skills; large, childish stitches in black at the bottom, pinkish more uniform threads in the middle, and tight tan stitches at the top.

So when I spotted “Big Toe Joe” my delight lay not completely in his original creation, nor did I view his missing eyes and ratty hair as desecration; I saw in him what others might miss in “Tigger” — all the spots where the stories lay. The same is true for “Jocko” the one-eared faceless monkey. There are stories in the wear & tear of these childhood cuddlies. They’d been saved for years due to love and I just had to honor that, continue their care, even if I don’t know all their stories. My collection is more than just old stuffed animals; it documents my path to save what I can of abandoned childhood memories.

Another collection which has its roots in my childhood is my “ancient Egyptian stuff” collection.

Just One Shelf Of My "Ancient Egyptian" Chotchkes

It began with those early forays to the library. I somehow stumbled into books about ancient Egypt, likely either from my love of Arabian horses, my passion of learning how to belly dance alone in my room, or a hot & heavy pursuit of mythology; take your pick. In any case I was instantly was smitten with ancient Egypt.

I began to get every Egyptian chotchke I could, no matter how obscurely it was connected. Family and friends have helped through the years, giving things with an excited & hopeful, “You don’t have this yet, do you?” I’ve amassed scarabs, papyrus, wooden and glass hippos, tacky tin mummies and boxes, jewelry old & new, plaster museum reproductions, African candle holders, handmade things with Egyptian motifs — and of course books.

At first my books were those heavily illustrated Time/Life numbers grabbed-for-cheap at flea markets and garage sales. As my fetish continued, including some study in college, family & friends continued to enable me by gifting me lush tomes full of photos of pharaoh tombs. But eventually I graduated to works which focused on the written word, even (when I can afford it) rare works by archaeologists either forgotten or mentioned in the footnotes of others.

When I look at my “Egyptian stuff” I don’t just see a collection of objects on a theme; I see my growth from dreamy romantic child to history lover, from history lover to history student, from student to independent researcher. And I see in all the items gifted to me, the support and love of family and friends.

These displays of my personal growth, of my values, aren’t “just things”. They are as important as snapshots. They are the visual cues to oral stories — if only someone would listen.

How, then, can collecting be seen as just a materialistic act?

The threads of collecting are always intertwined: One invariably leads to another once you get started.    We went to an auction a few weeks ago, at which time we got The Book of Knowledge, a set of Childcraft-like books from Edwardian England.  This morning, as I was shuffling around those partial-encyclopedia-sets that we got, I noticed several gray-spined books with barely readable embossed writing.   I picked one volume up and tipped it towards a window, to get a better look at what it said: The New Self-Educator.  It couldn’t be, could it?   I flipped open to the title page, and sure enough, it is The New Harmsworth Self-Educator, as edited by Arthur Mee, editor of The Book of Knowledge (also known as the Children’s Encyclopedia).

Arthur Mee was born in 1875, second-oldest child and the oldest son of Henry and Mary Mee.    He excelled in literary courses, so for obvious reasons found work at a newspaper, the Nottingham Evening Post. He proved himself an excellent reporter and essayist, and eventually Mee outgrew his Nottingham roots and headed to London in 1896.   Sir Alfred Harmsworth was a difficult character to miss in the journalistic field at that time — he had published a number of successful small periodicals in the 1880s, but in the 1890s he turned to the newspaper business.   About the time Mee made it to London,  Harmsworth had just launched the Daily Mail, the premiere tabloid newspaper to come from Harmsworth’s presses.   Mee was extremely prolific, producing thousands of written words a day, and he kept a huge library of news-clippings that numbered in the hundreds of thousands of indexed references to pull from when researching his works.  Mee’s freelance writing attracted Harmworth’s attention and garnered Mee a position on the Self-Educator’s editorial staff.  At first, like the later Children’s Encyclopedia, the Harmsworth Self-Educator was a periodical, published twice-monthly, providing several educational articles at a time.  When the article-count climbed high enough, and demand had grown to such a degree, the articles from the periodical (along with some pulled from other sources) were compiled into the ten-volume encyclical set.

In the Self-Educator, we can see the origins of the Children’s Encyclopedia.  The Self-Educator is a compilation of topically grouped articles rather an alphabetical organization, but each volume does have a standard list of chapter topics: “Success”, “Civil Service and Professions”, “Languages”, “Clerkship”, etc. Each volume contained those same chapters, with two or three articles contained in each.   Some articles are purely factual textbook-like informational pieces, while other articles on manners, literature, and art often use creative language and dry humor for a more appealing tone.  The tone and type of information is for a significanly older age-set than the Encyclopedia, but that is a condition of its audience.  At the time, “graduation” occurred in the early teenage years — if they could attend school at all — so little more than the very basic education was directly available for the poorer classes.  While the Self-Educator was a significant investment, it gave those people with the barest of educations the chance to continue their learning at their own pace.

D has come to love the Children’s Encyclopedia as well, and her first question as I was researching was, “does it have the same cool illustrations?”   The Self- Educator is a bit more bare- bones and less visually appealing than the Encyclopedia, although it appears to use photographs and diagrams about as much as the Encyclopedia.  Since the Self-Educator has less fairy-tales and nursery rhymes, there are fewer cartoony illustrations, and the Self-Educator lacks the artistic borders and flourishes of the Encyclopedia.  This may make the Self-Educator less appealing to some book collectors because it has a feel more like a textbook than the Encyclopedia.   As with my edition of the Book of Knowledge/Children’s Encyclopedia, my Harmsworth Self-Educator is incomplete.  I believe we’re only missing two volumes, which may make it easier to complete the set.   Arthur Mee put an enormous amount of work into these two encyclopedic sets, it would be an injustice to his efforts to leave these incomplete.

As you may have heard, the Wifey and I bought a vanload of old books at a rural auction.  We have touched pretty much everything we got at the auction, but we’re just getting to looking deeply at our new acquisions.  We’ve set aside boxes of ‘cutters’ (damaged or otherwise worthless picture books, for altered art), books for resale, and books to keep.    In the end, we found that most of what we got were boxes of encyclopedias — partial encyclopedia sets.  Oh, there were a few complete sets.  Spread out amongst 3 or 4 boxes we assembled two complete sets of the Teacher’s and Pupil’s Cyclopedia…which I already owned a set of.   You know you’ve got a book-collecting problem when you own three copies of the same encyclopedia.  I may write more about those in the future.    The most disappointing partial set we acquired is The Book of Knowledge.

The Book of Knowledge traces its origin back to 1880s England, when writer Arthur Mee was enlisted to write for Sir Alfred Harmsworth’s “Harmsworth Self-Educator“, a magazine of facts and instruction on improving one’s life and knowledge.  In editing and compiling the varied and flowering knowledge that filled the pages of the Self-Educator, Mee saw value to compiling an educational library for children.   In 1908, Mee released The Children’s Encyclopedia.   Today, we visualize an encyclopedia as a alphabetized collection of dry, informational articles that you used to jump-start a gradeschool research paper.   Mee’s Encyclopedia was nothing of the sort.   The Children’s Encyclopedia was far more magazine-like in structure, having no categorical or alphabetical organization.  Categories could be seen, but no individual volume had more or less of any particular type of information than any other.  Grab any single volume, and it contains short stories, how-to articles, poetry, scientific explanations, moral instruction, and historical narratives.  Mee’s intent was to include the basis for an entire education in a few dozen books.

In 1912, Mees’ Children’s Encyclopedia was embraced by the 20-year-old Grolier Society, Inc.   Grolier was a subscription-based publisher at that time, selling book series door-to-door and selling editions on a monthly basis.   The first major change to the Children’s Encyclopedia was a change of name:  Grolier released the American edition as The Book of Knowledge.

The Book of Knowledge lent itself well to being purchased in installments:  each the unstructured volume stands well on its own, broken up into chapters (called ‘books’) such as “The Book of the Earth”, “The Book of Golden Deeds” , “The Book Of Our Own Life”.   Each ‘book’ has several chapters, each a separate, stand-alone article.  While the books are intended for children, the basic knowledge isn’t dumbed-down to an insulting level.  The books are well-written, readable by children and adults alike, and many articles appear written for children and adults to read together.   Mee continued his writing, when not revising his Encyclopedia, by publishing The Children’s Newspaper, a periodical extension of the Encyclopedia that is still available online.

It appears that we own the 1912 first US edition, because there is no date later than 1911 on the copyright page.   Editions were put out well into the 1960s, after which time Grolier had acquired the Encyclopedia Americana, and revised the Book of Knowledge as the New Book of Knowledge with a more encyclopedic format.  In terms of value, there’s a dual market for these books.   Collectors, like myself, love the older editions with their classic literature and Edwardian progressive sensibilities, but the other market is a bit more unusual.  I was quite surprised to find out that Home-Schooling organizations recommend using the Book of Knowledge in curriculum due to its relevance and ease in education.  As I mentioned above, our set of The Book of Knowledge is one of the encyclopedia sets that is, sadly, incomplete.   The original set was 20 volumes, and we’ve got about 3/4.   It may take some shoppping to get a complete set, but I have every intention of completing this womderful series.