Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Bookman (New York), April 1920:

[Attached: a "bon mot incarnate"]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Weg, by Violet Irwin:

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Vanity Fair, July-October 1919:

"a scene that would have provoked a sphinx to laughter"

[Other snippets attached. You may recognize Parker's "we sleep under blankets almost every other night" (my emphases) as a riff on the old postcard cliche "we sleep under blankets every night," whereby city people taking summer vacations in the mountains touted the cool evenings. As you may know, in the pre-air-conditioning era, that was right up there with "wish you were here" (at least if humorists of the time are to be believed).]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Prefaces, by Don Marquis (illustrated by Tony Sarg):

[Clearly, the publishers of this book were playing a long game. They took out a display ad to promote it in the June 1919 issue of Vanity Fair, and less than 104 years later I came along, got lured in by the ad, and enjoyed the book for free in an out-of-copyright web archive. In the past I've never warmed up to Marquis, but the idea of a book entirely composed of prefaces to imaginary books seemed worth investigating. (And haven't we encountered *another* book of this nature--some other book of introductions to nonexistent books?) Snippets attached.]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

The latest from Vanity Fair:

["Of all the arts!" is the heading for an ad about pearls (which are said here to be the most whatever of all the arts of adornment)...but I prefer to hear "of all the arts!" as a mild oath. "Well, of all the arts, look who's coming up the walkway just when we're sitting down to supper!"]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Vanity Fair, Sept. 1917:

Notes:
1. What first attracted me to the ad for the pearls was the effect of "To Say the Least!" acting as a caption for the illustration of the woman above it, as though it were a decontextualized critical moment from a short story. Then I read the ad copy, which I thought was amusingly perplexing in its own right. It had me trying to do the math, and saying to myself, "Okay...so where exactly does that leave us?"
2. The rest of the attached snippets are from the Nathan piece whose clever title is shown. I like how beans figure in two independent bits, both of which are funny on their own in different ways. The (partial) list, as you may have guessed, represents a ranking of the supposedly funniest things in vaudeville as of even date. Farther down the list (and not shown here) appears "Imprinting a kiss of goodbye on a dollar bill about to be loaned to someone." Nathan appends a comment that his source proved fallible only in saying "Swiss where it should have been Gorgonzola" [attention: "Which Is Funnier?" desk]. Finally, re. the omnipresent "boob," I note that this article precedes by four years Merriam-Webster's earliest known date for "booboisie," a term which as you probably know was associated with (originated by?) Nathan's editorial partner Mencken.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Vanity Fair, July-August 1917:

Some notes on the attachments:
1. I realize we're probably looking edge-on at a hat whose brim encircles the entire head (sombrero-style)...but the impression of antlers is hard for me to avoid, especially if I think of hat antlers as one-upping all those hats with rabbitlike "ears" sticking up.
2. I'm sure she gets this all the time! It turns out the hyphen properly goes between "Evans" and "Burrows," not between "Burrows" and "Fontaine." If it's any consolation to her, though, Wikipedia tells us that her birthplace is, in our time, a ghost town. (RLG?)
3. I'm enclosing the cartoon tableau because (a) I love the stylized "group reaction"; (b) some of the hats seem actually to express the emotions of the astonished group members; and (c) the character in the foreground is apparently so tipsy that his jacket is slipping over the edge of the frame.
4. Needless to say, PGW's words about his theatrical collaborator Bolton have a very familiar ring for us Wodehouse enthusiasts, because Bertie Wooster talks this way about Jeeves. But I find no evidence that the Bertie/Jeeves versions of these assertions occurred prior to a story first published in 1924 (where the phrasing seen here is replicated verbatim)--and so it seems that PGW used these words about his friend *before* repurposing them for Jeeves.