Those still wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg, aren't reading the right books.

The Dogs and the Fleas was written by a dog named Frederic Scrimshaw in 1893.

The setting mapped on the endpapers is even divided into acres, as in "the Hundred Acre Wood," in this rather blatant "tribute" to Winnie the Pooh, two decades later.  We decoded the young reader's squiggle.  It says, "Christopher Robin did it first."  From Poo and the Baby Bunny Rabbit by Edwin Megargee, 1947.

This cursed image appears in Gaston's 1975 yearbook.

It's been said that "The author should be invisible every step of the way" (Angela Ackerman).  And that includes the title page, apparently.  This page is exactly as scanned by Google Books: "The Works of."

From The Nine Lives of a Cat by Charles Bennett, 1860.  Are nine lives only for cats?  See How to Be Your Own Cat.

This one has a different cover: Who Likes the Dark? by Virginia Howell.

From Fields of Applied Psychology by Anne Anastasi.

From Astrology by Ronald C. Davison.

That's quite similar to the face we made the last time we tried to arrange a bouquet of eggs.  From Bouquet of Eggs by Genevieve Bowdoin.

I think I've read this one.

Yes, even Uncle Sam uses a ghost writer.  Here's an "as told to" autobiography (when it comes to Uncle Sam, of course, history is autobiography): The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself As Recorded in Uncle Sam's Own Words by Harris Dickson, 1917.

Unusual to see a byline shared with elm trees.  Yet who better than hedge-row elms to know about the countryside?  And Mr. Woodward is aptly named, for whether we head woodward, hillockward, mountainward, rivuletward, or valleyward, we'll undoubtedly learn to enjoy the countryside.  From How to Enjoy the Countryside by Marcus Woodward, undated.

Manx Crosses, or, The Inscribed and Sculptured Monuments of the Isle of Man From About the End of the Fifth to the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century by P. M. C. Kermode, 1907.

You've heard of the art crowd, but did you know they're color-by-number?  From The Art Crowd by Sophy Burnham, 1973.

A decade before Jonathan Livingston Seagull, there was Evangeline: Pigeon of Paris by Natalie Savage Carlson, 1960.

Here are four different / same books by Dostoevsky / Dostoyevsky / Dostoieffsky: Injury and Insult, The Insulted and Humiliated, The Insulted and Injured, and Humiliated and Insulted.  We wonder if even a single person on earth has read all four.

A rose is a peacock feather.  From Rosa Amorosa by George Egerton, 1901.

"The word-hoard."  From Handbook of the Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England by George Stephens, 1884.

Who Lifted the Lid Off of Hell? by Elbert Hubbard, 1914.