Inscribed
Monster Midway. An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny.
New York: Rinehart & Company, 1953.
Price: $6,000.00
About the item
First edition. 307, [2]pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Black cloth. Fiine in Very Good pictorial dust jacket by Sue Foster.
Item #325625
Inscribed on the front flyleaf to Fletcher & Inga Pratt by the author : “For Fletcher & Inga and all the monks, all of whom have put up with me through the ‘difficult’ years, all my love, Bill Gresham Nov. 16 /’ 53”.
William Lindsay Gresham (1909-1962), author of Nightmare Alley (1946), had been an editor of true crime novels when he came back to New York after serving as a volunteer medic in the Abrahm Lincoln Brigade in Spain. He had a lifelong interest in sideshows and the carny, which shows up in his novels and in Monster Midway. In 1953, he had split from his wife, Joy Davidman, who went ot England and became the muse of C.S. Lewis.
Novelist, historian, and bon vivant Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was dean of nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference from the late 1930s until 1955, and was well connected in New York literary and science fiction circles ; his wife Inga was was an artist and illustrator. They entertained frequently at their apartment in New York and their house in Atlantic Highlands: the “monks” in the inscription are the members of the Ipsy-Wipsy Institute, as their weekend parties were dubbed. In the 1930s, Pratt had published widely in the true crime genre; like Gresham, he was a heavy drinker.
