[Midcentury Joke Collection] by [Humor]: [Canadiana] - [ca. 1952]

np: np, [ca. 1952]. Very good. 4to. Brad-bound file, repurposed from offical Canadian military use, with printing to inside covers. [42] typescript pages, followed by 5 leaves with clippings mounted, and approximately 10 loose clippings laid in. All materials very good overall.

Collected jokes, puns, satirical verse, and humorous anecdotes from the early 1950s, most uncredited and gathered from a variety of sources; perhaps used as an aide-memoire for a performer or public speaker. The opening excerpt sets the tone: "Men are what women marry. They have two feet, two hands (sometimes I think more) and sometimes two wives, but never more than one collar or idea at a time."

Notably recurring joke subjects include wives and socialism, twin fountains of endless hilarity to the midcentury mind; military life, only scarcely less popular, with numerous insider anecdotes; Scotsmen; Russians ("Adam and Eve were Russians - They had no clothes, lived on an apple and they thought they were in Paradise") and MacKenzie King, tenth prime minister of Canada (the latter target, along with scattered Calgary references, strongly suggests a Canadian compiler in, or recently out of, military service).

Content is 'clean' in the style of the very early 1950s, with occasional lapses into innuendo (a story of an island where there are no automobiles, no horses, just donkeys, goes a long way for its payoff: "[S]ome people have asses that you wouldn't look at twice, while others have extraordinary asses.")

A fascinating assemblage of ephemeral popular and folk humor of a lost era.