Item #40835 Burgess Unabridged. A New Dictionary of Words you have always needed. Gelett Burgess.

A Wonderful Gelett Burgess Presentation, with Drawing & Letter

Burgess Unabridged. A New Dictionary of Words you have always needed.

New York: Frederick A. Stokes, [1941].

Price: $600.00


About the item

Later edition (first published in 1941). With Cover Designs and Illustrations by Herb Roth. 1 vols. 12mo. A Wonderful Gelett Burgess Presentation, with Drawing & Letter. Pictorial boards. Near fine copy, with only a large fragment of the dust jacket present.

Item #40835

Inscribed on the front pastedown to New York columnist Leonard Lyons:

"Motherwords / to / Leonard Lyons / my pet columnist / and specialist in Paradox and Antithesis. / Gelett Burgess."

Burgess has also penned a four-line poem at the top of the same page, entitled 'TO A COLUMNIST':

"Happy is he who confers publicity /
"His is a life of sheer felicity -
"Invited to dinners, free passes to shows.
"And who writes his paragraphs for him
"God Knows!"

In addition, Burgess has supplied a comical, full-page multi-colored drawing on the opposite page, entitled: "Men Kiss and Ride Away." And finally, there is a TLs (with his monogram‚, dated Sept. 9th, 1949, laid in presenting the book to Lyons (famous NY Post columnist), in which Burgess apologizes for the drawing: "Dear Leonard: I am sending you separately a copy of my 'Burgess Unabridged' rare and long out of print, with a frontispiece that I am a bit ashamed of, water color not being my medium. It is a copy of the first of my series of Crypto-Primitives (New-Exclammatory school), some of the others being titled, God's Little Sister, That Name You Can't Remember, You Can, A Kiss is but a Commencement, Love is an Island, I Have Been Here Somehow Before, Christmas in Hell, &c &c. I'd be glad if you'd come and see them here sometime. Positively NOT abstractions. Now I'm painting Truth and the PhD's ... "