SLADEN, Douglas. Fair Inez. A romance of Australia. London, Hutchinson [1918]. Octavo publisher's cloth; 16 page publisher's list for spring 1918 at the end. Minor signs of use and some spotting or browning, a pretty good copy. Inscribed affectionately and signed by Sladen in June 1935 to "Dorothy ... another English soul who married an Australian." A small pencil note on the front paste down suggests that Sladen paid 2/6 for this copy in April 1935. If so, he's not the only author to buy their own books to give away. Au$400
First edition of this futuristic fantasy which opens in the year 2000 with the great airship Murrumbidgee from London coming into land at Melbourne. Returning home is Pat Lindsay Gordon, son of Adam Lindsay Gordon IV and great-grandson of Adam Lindsay Gordon II, in turn the grandson of a cousin of the revered poet. The Gordons obviously breed hard and fast. His sister Inez will doubtless be the femme fatale of the book. Read on yourself.
HILL, Headon. [Francis Edward Grainger]. The Jesmond Mystery. London, Ward Lock 1919. Octavo brown cloth lettered and blocked in black. An excellent, bright copy. Au$125
First edition; the detective here is the mildly alcoholic provincial reporter Sam Sprot.
McCUTCHEON, George Barr. Anderson Crow Detective. NY, Dodd Mead 1920. Octavo green cloth. Some browning, mostly at the ends; quite a good copy. Au$50
First edition.
$1000000 Reward [Hyakumandoru no Kensho]. Tokyo, Shunkodo 1920 (Taisho 1920). Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper printed in red and black and colour illustrated dustwrapper (the spine of this insect nibbled); two photo plates and illustrated title. Stab holes indicating this had been in some outer binding; natural browning of the paper; an outstanding copy. An owner's seal and brushed inscription inside the front cover and on the back cover suggests this is some kind of file copy. Au$475
A pulpish film edition in Japanese translation of the 1920 serial thriller $1,000,000 Reward starring Lillian Walker. The film itself is lost and from what I can figure out not much more than production credits and a partial list of chapter headings survives in English. This book is near as lost, I can find only one record of another copy - not in a library.
[Miezaru Te] The Invisible Hand. Tokyo, Shunkodo 1921 (Taisho 10). Octavo publisher's colour colour illustrated wrapper; four photo illustrations on two plates. Stab holes indicating this had been in some outer binding; natural browning of the paper; an outstanding copy. Au$400
A pulpish film edition in Japanese translation of the 1920 Vitagraph serial thriller The Invisible Hand starring the then Latin idol Antonio Moreno. The serial was not, despite what some authorities will tell you, a western. The film itself is lost and from what I can figure out not much more than production credits and a list of chapter headings survives in English. This book is near as lost, I can't find any record of another copy.
By the mid fifties Moreno was a support in Creature from the Black Lagoon and an Indian chief in Saskatchewan.
Maruo Shiyo. [Mei Tantei Komyo Kurabe Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Omoshiro Kurabu 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadsheet 55x79; some marks, splits in folds and small holes. Used but not bad. On the back is a monochrome baseball game that looks dull. Au$200
Maybe not the best copy of this captivating detective sugoroku but ... This was the new year gift from the magazine Omoshiro Kurabe - the Interesting Club.
FREEMAN, R. Austin. The Surprising Adventures of Mr Shuttlebury Cobb. London, Hodder [1927]. Octavo publisher's decorated brown cloth. A few spots on the edges and the first couple of leaves but a rather good, bright copy. Au$75
First edition.
Enomoto Horeikan. [cover title: ]. [Gizoku Dokufu Den : Yoma no Joen?] Osaka, Enomoto Shoten 1927 (Taisho 16). 19x13cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 350,[2]pp, illustrated title and frontispiece. Browning of the cheap paper and a hint of staining of the bottom edge at the beginning. Pretty good for such a disposable book. Au$120
A charming and substantial example of Dokufu - poisonous women - literature. The title sort of translates as Life Story of a Dokufu Robber : Demon's Passion. Put that together with the cover and no more needs to be said. Especially as this is a cheap pulp once you get inside.
From what I can glean Enomoto Horeikan is a series from Enomoto Matsunosuke who produced cheap pulp like this that, along with akahon (red books - luridly printed cheap kid's books), manga and suchlike, by-passed the usual distribution chains and were sold directly at railway stations, festivals and stalls.
I can't find a record of this anywhere.
ROLLINS Jr., William. Midnight Treasure. NY, Coward-McCann 1929. Octavo, very good in publisher's red cloth and dustwrapper (a couple of tiny chips from the bottom of the dustwrapper spine). Au$90
First edition of Rollins' first novel, a murder mystery narrated by a boy but not for kids; the dustwrapper blurb calls him 'kin to Huck Finn'. I gather Rollins was something of a bohemian rabble-rouser, better known for his labor novels; I picture him leaning against certain Paris and Greenwich Village bars in a seaman's jersey.
ARLEN, Michael. Man's Mortality. A story. London, Heinemann 1933. Octavo, very good in publisher's cloth and dustwrapper. Au$40
First edition of Arlen's dystopian science fiction and one of his least successful books. Set fifty odd years in the future, world hegemony is in the hands of a mutli-national company that got its start with a world changing invention in aviation.
Minamimura Takashi. [Jido Taiho-ki]. Original illustration for a double page spread in Shonen magazine. n.p. [195-?] Illustration in ink and gouache on two cards, each 32x22cm. Tape marks on the backs. Au$500
Minamimura is best known for his outer space and apocalyptic monster and alien illustrations but it's clear he could work happily with any new wizzbang invention. And what could be better than this FBI automatic crook catcher for banks? How many bank robbers would it catch before they stood a foot or two to the right?
Street Kamishibai. Gataro & Yaeko? : 13 [Shinigami Musume : 13 kan]. [& 23]. np. Sadamusha? 195-? Ten handpainted and varnished sheets on heavy boards, 26x36cm. Text handwritten on the back. Edges worn and minor scrapes and blemishes as expected. Stamps of the Osaka and Nagoya kamishibai ethics committees, which my informant speculates were self proclaimed entities that existed nowhere other than as stamps on a handful of stories. Added is the wrecked but complete episode 23, also ten cards. The left hand quarter has been wet and is quite damaged but it is certainly worth saving. Au$1000
If you've looked at published kamishibai and wondered how it could ever have been popular ... it wasn't. The published stuff was almost all heavy handed propaganda and improving drivel produced without any artistic skill or imagination by government and education agencies and pressed on children in schools. Real street kamishibai was produced by hand by the kamishibai men themselves or by associations - such as the Sadamusha - that acted more or less as lending libraries. Which is not to say that a hell of a lot of street kamishibai wouldn't be described kindly as 'naive'. But enough had to be compelling to bring and keep audiences. Specially through hundreds of episodes, which some stories ran for.
Kamishibai was not long lived. It was more or less born with cinema and died with television, and the greatest works, as far as they have survived, were produced toward the end, during the occupation after the war. The connection to film serials is inescapable of course but kamishibai is not burdened with technical restraints. If you can imagine it, you can draw it and you can tell the story.
This is the complete episode 13 of what might be translated as 'Death's Daughter' which I'm told is a story of horror and revenge but I doubt that anyone living knows the whole story. As far as I can figure, when the kamishibai industry ground to a halt the kamishibai men just packed away, or threw away, whatever episodes they had. If a large hunk of a story or, something I've never seen, a whole story was held by the association you can be sure it was dull, rarely used. Here, I've traced only episodes 10 to 15* which all seem to have come from the same source. How many episodes were there? Who knows.
*Episode 23, now added from the same source and unlikely to be supplemented, doesn't help with the plot but it does ratchet up the tension. Is it all as brutally murderous as this? I suspect so.
It's pretty fabulous, no Golden Yasha but a fair slice of that essential overwrought pervasive dread and stark fear.
Kamishibai are public stories usually told by kamishibai men who set up a folding stand on the back of their bicycles and acted the dramas illustrated on the cards. With the plates in order, the text for the first picture is on the back of the last. The sheets are transferred to the back as the story continues; the text for the second picture is on the back of the first, and so on.
Minamimura Takashi. Original illustration for a double page spread in Shonen magazine. n.p. c1960? Illustration in ink and watercolour on two sheets of card, each 27x18cm with most of the right panel cut away for the text block. Taped onto a translucent sheet; a couple of editorial notes. Au$600
Minamimura is best known for his outer space and apocalyptic monster and alien illustrations but destruction by any high-tech means was right up his alley. Here is a fine bit of cold war Japanese atomic apocalypse art by one of the masters. Forget the background geography, that's Tokyo Tower crumpling. Tokyo Tower and the first successful intercontinental missile flight both date to 1958.
Minamimura Takashi. - [Robotto Kaiju - Saibogu Kaiju]. Original illustration for the magazine Shonen. n.p. [c1960?]. Illustration in ink and watercolour on card 27x20cm, tapemarks in the margins. Lettering and inset illustration pasted on. Au$950
Minamimura was the master of apocalyptic aliens, monsters and outer space. No-one does devastation, cars and trains flying like debris, and crumbling skyscrapers with more relish. A useful annotated diagram of our robot-cyborg monster is inset - the text can be read on a photocopy of the finished magazine page that comes with this. The pasted inset robot is a revision: held up to the light we can see a much bulkier monster underneath. Minamimura calls this a cyborg monster which might date it to after May 1960 when 'cyborg' was supposedly first used by Clynes & Kline in a paper for the Space Flight Symposium and reported in the New York Times.
MOSER, Inspector Maurice ... late of Scotland Yard. The Modern Detective; or Shadows & Shadowland & the Crime Investigator. Vol. 1., No. 1. [all published?]. London, March 9, 1898. 31x25cm publisher's printed wrapper; 20pp; illustrations in half-tone and line. Minor signs of use; rather good. Au$300
All published it seems and rare.Worldcat finds one entry for this one issue and I can't add to that. I would have thought the 1890s was a fine time to start a detective magazine but I suspect a deeper purse than The Modern Detective displays was necessary. Even prizes for a new design of handcuffs and for the solution to the theft of Lady Lackington's jewels could not spur sales enough to justify a second number. Not even the appearance of The Misadventures of Sheerluck Gnomes by a T.P. Stafford.
Inspector Moser (late of Scotland Yard) published a book or two of ostensible real life stories from his time at the yard a few years earlier and an article on handcuffs in the Strand in 1894 but vanishes into the shadowland of literary hacks after this. He seems destined to be remembered as the unpleasant private detective who unwillingly gave his name to woman detective Antonia Moser after their rupture.
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