Dear Dead Days

London: Paul Hamlyn, 1959. First UK edition. Hardcover. Good/Good. 126pp. Quarto [28.5 cm] Light blue cloth-effect paper over boards with black lettering on the spine and front board, and a black ink stamped vignette on the front cover. Purple and black ornately illustrated endpapers. Darkened at the spine ends and a bit along the board edges. Contemporary gift inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper. Two pieces of blue tape were formerly adhered to the copyright page and traces of blue from the tape remain. Tape staining to the title page as well. Else the pages are clean. In the dust jacket, with intermittent closed and open edge tears. The longest tear is closed (along the front fold of the spine) and measures 5 inches. There is a small abraded patch to the rear panel. Charles Addams is a well known name in the world of humor. Much of his work appeared in The New Yorker and is available in the best-selling collections Homebodies, Monster Rally, Addams and Evil and Drawn and Quartered. In Dear Dead Days, Addams presents the sources which served as his inspiration, including The Double-Headed Baby, a photograph of two boys looking at a dead cat in the road, various automobile accidents, Galapagos Islands, the Grigsby House Drawing Room, lady dissectionists, the only complete shrunken body extant, Rube Burrows in his coffin, and much more. (Inventory #: 67733)