A Blog of Bosh

I did not know that orecchio acerbo, who published my Italian translation of Peter Newell’s Slant Book last year, had also produced a short booktrailer which you can see on YouTube:

You can also download a pdf of the Italian edition of the whole book from orecchio acerbo’s site.

No. 1
“It seems to me it orter work,”
Said Farmer Hiram Beggs,
“By feeding Hens on Easter dyes
To deckerate their eggs.”
No. 2
And sure enough for several days
The eggs were many-hued
With stranger markings on the shells
Than Beggs had ever viewed.
No. 3
He peddled them about the town
And found a brisk demand.
He sold a dozen lovely ones
To Mrs. Cyrus Bland.
No. [...]

In the second half of the nineteenth century the west shows a sudden interest in images that can be seen upside down. There are several examples, the most famous being probably Peter Newell’s Topsys and Turvys (New York: The Century Co., 1893), followed by a second volume in 1894, and Gustave Verbeek’s comic strip, Upside-Downs [...]

Here is a poem, made of three limericks, by Louise Ayres Garnett and illustrated by Peter Newell. I’m taking it from an eBay auction, the description dates it to 1922 but does not say where it is taken from:

Four quadrupeds danced a quadrille
On the summit of Somebody’s hill,
And a lily-white queen
Looked on at the scene
And [...]

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1899, vol. C, No. DXCV, “Literary Notes” by John Kendrick Bangs, review of Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes:
… Equally individual in the character of his work is Mr. Peter Newell, who has just published a collection of his quaintly illustrated nonsense verses under the title of Peter Newell’s Pictures and [...]

In 1909 Peter Newell filed an application for a patent on books with leaves “having designs thereon, and having corresponding portions of said designs cut away to provide sight openings.” The drawings used to illustrate it are sketches of the pictures published that same year under the title of Jungle-Jangle, a mild satire of Theodore [...]

Peter Newell’s innovations in book technology, while mostly not very radical, induced him to patent the designs he created, below is the first page of his patent for the Slant Book:

In the specification he writes:

… I, Peter S. Newell of Leonia, in the State of New Jersey, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in [...]

You can now read Philip Hofer’s article on “Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes”, which was published in Colophon. A Book Collectors’ Quarterly in 1934.

The Peter Newell section of nonsenselit.org now has a full-size, perfect copy of Peter Newell’s Jungle-Jangle.

Thanks to Bob & Ellen Watters, who kindly contacted me and scanned the book.