SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE

Chicago, IL, 1925.. Cloth and boards, paper label. 22.5 x 15 cm. Edges worn, particularly around the crown and foot of the spine, but a reasonably good copy of a privately printed handmade book. First and only edition. Inscribed by the author on the front pastedown: "For Wallace - my incomparable friend - Herbert Jan. 26,'26." Weinstock (1905 - 1971) was a prolific translator, biographer and critic in the field of music, and beginning in 1943 for many years worked as music editor for Alfred A. Knopf. He had briefly attended the University of Chicago, but left to open his own short-lived bookshop at a point roughly coinciding with the publication of this collection of prose pieces, and a privately published poem, dated the following year. The recipient of the inscription, Wallace Brockway (1905-1972), met Weinstock at the University of Chicago and went on to cowrite with him MEN OF MUSIC: THEIR LIVES, TIMES AND ACHIEVEMENTS (1939) and THE OPERA A HISTORY OF ITS CREATION AND PERFORMANCE (1941). This book shows every sign of being undertaken as an amateur printing project; however, there is no colophon nor comment about the size of what surely must have been a small edition. OCLC/Worldcat reports no institutional holdings of this title.