A wonderful, authorially inscribed volume by the first humorist in 19th century America.
B. P. Shallaber, i.e. Mrs. Partington, was the editor of America's first humor magazine and has been called the "torch-bearer" of the American humor movement in the mid-1800s. He was also, scholars tell us, the first editor to publish a comic sketch by a young Samuel Clemens, who would go on to become the quintessential American humorist, Mark Twain. The article was The Dandy Frightening the Squatter [1852].
His periodical as well as many of his works employed the carpet bag or grip-sack as a metaphor for a bag of “who knows what.” Snake oil salesmen, home remedies, wigs woven in France . . . it was a metaphor for the absurdities of the traveling salesmen of the mid-19th century. These also feature in Twain’s writings via the "carpetbaggers," etc.
Copies of any of his works are scarce, and this a particularly fine example, inscribed by the author to Dr. J. L. M. Willis of Eliot, Maine.
Mrs. Partington [i.e. B. P. Shillaber]. Mrs. Partington's New Grip-Sack, Filled with Fresh Things. New York. J. S. Ogilvie. 1890. 240pp.
Very good in half red morocco with raised bands, contrasting marbled endsheets. Aside from some light handling, exceptional. Bookbinder's ticket of J. D. Randall of Portsmouth. Signed and inscribed by the author on the blank ffep.
