The Thurber carnival

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945. Hardcover. Very mild rubbing to spine head and foot, light soiling to spine and boards, faint soiuling to fore-edges, else very good.. Light brown-orange octavo, deckle edges, xiii, 369 pages, b&w illustrations, 23 cm. Lacking DJ. As James Thurber writes in his preface, "This book contains a selection of the stories and drawings the old boy did in his prime, a period which extended roughly from the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to the day coffee was rationed. He presents this to his readers with his sincere best wishes for a happy new world." The Thurber Carnival, which the Saturday Review called "one of the absolutely essential books of our time," was a phenomenal bestseller when it was first published in 1945. The omnibus, virtually all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, draws from such Thurber classics as My World and Welcome to It, My Life and Hard Times, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bedroom, and Men, Women and Dogs. - Publisher. Contents: I. Stories not collected in book form. -- II. From My world and welcome to it. -- III. From Let your mind alone. -- IV. From The middle aged man on the flying trapeze. -- V. My life and hard times, complete. -- VI. From Fables for our time and Famous poems illustrated. -- VII. From The owl in the attic. -- VIII. From The seal in the bedroom. -- IX. From Men, women and dogs. Humorous stories, American, Fables.