Knopf, 1926.
In celebration of Allan's birthday, I'll offer up here a randomly chosen quintessential Allan book. We've had these before, of course, and will have more until we're done with this project. A second-hand bookstore is a reflection of the proprietor's personality. If filled with boring books, he's probably an incurious guy. If filled with books that are way too expensive, he's likely to be a tightwad. Allan's store was an accretion of decades of material, which he toted to the next outpost every time he relocated. It was interesting in a way that no other shop was this side of Serendipity. Just about all his books, as I think these posts demonstrate, were quintessential Allan books.
The non-Allan books didn't stick around long. In the very front of the store, the new material would get piled, usually on one of the glass cases. The absolute best stuff never made it any further -- one of the regulars would come in and see that hardcover of Snowcrash that Allan had just bought from a scout for $20. The regular would give Allan $100 and put it in his bag. If Allan had catalogued the book he could have gotten $1,000 but there was never any time for that.
One of the first bookcases on the right side was dedicated to new arrivals, but generally the further back you went in the store the more static the stock was. Which isn't to say there weren't treasures of a sort there. Take the book at hand, which was probably filed alphabetically and languished there. Eighty-five years old, it's in superb condition for its age. But what is it?
This isn't the UK first, which would be the one to have if you had the money (not much money, as it happens -- a couple of hundred bucks). It's not even the American first, which seems scarce. It's a Knopf reprint done four years later in the Students' Library of Contemporary Fiction, basically a series of Knopf classics. Since students have no time for frivolities, the jacket bears no illustration other than a decorative device.
There is glassine underneath the jacket, which has served to keep the boards a tight bright blue. There is a reasonably good introduction by the long forgotten man of letters Carl van Doren. As for the work itself, it is a minor classic of sorts. Chapter One begins engagingly:
"Some few years ago a brief account of me found its way into one or two country newspapers. I have been told, that it reappeared, later, in better proportion, in the Metropolitan Press! Fortunately, or unfortunately, very little of this account was true. It related, among other things, that I am accustomed to wear shoes with leaden soles to them to keep me from being blown away like thistledown in the wind, that as a child I had narrowly escaped being scalded to death in a soup tureen, that one of my ancestors came from Poland, that I am an expert painter of miniatures, that I am a changeling and can speak the fairy tongue. And so on and so forth."
Allan priced this at $40, noting it was scarce in jacket. True; no other copies are online. I'm almost tempted to post this online, and see how long it takes to sell at that price. Forever, I'd guess.