PARLOR PERFORMANCES
[AMERICAN "RECITERS"]

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As a long-running popular-culture genre, the "reciter" or "reader" anthologized stories, skits, jokes, and poems for both children and adults, with everything in it designed for learning by rote for oral presentation during family hours or in public at (for example) school, civic, or lodge functions. A repertoire from an array of reciters also allowed one to shine as part of parlor entertainment in boarding house life, where, in pre-radio and pre-television days, stories were read aloud and roomers performed skits and declaimed after dinner! The books were a favorite mail-order acquisition of children and, apparently, teen-agers. All examples below are side stitched in printed, often elaborately printed, wrappers. (Side stitching to "bind" pamphlets and other small publications was introduced ca. 1880 and involves the use of flat metal staples in place of sewing with thread.) All are in exceptionally good to fine condition and may have emerged from a box of remainders. Such covers in such condition could form an important part of an exhibition about U.S. Victorian bindings. These anthologies display, for good and for ill, the mainstream humor of the post–Civil War to WWI era, most of it ethnically based and presented in dialect—sometimes still good for a fine bark of a laugh and at other times grossly offensive to the modern reader. Irish, French, and German immigrants are pilloried, so too the "Negro," Yankee, and "ill-educated" "back-woods" citizenry. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Piozzi appear, excerpted, among the often deservedly forgotten, and the books offer many classic set-pieces, from "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" to "The Old Oaken Bucket" to "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Precisely when these publications were printed is not easily established. Most have copyright dates but none have publication dates. We know, for example, that all of the "Dick's" books were copyright by Dick and Fitzgerald, some as early as 1871, but more than a few bear "Fitzgerald Publishing Corporation" on the title-page, and that company did not come into existence until after William Dick's death in 1901. That is a good capsule view of the problem.

Dick, William B., ed. Dick's recitations and readings No. 14. A carefully compiled selection of humorous, pathetic, eloquent, patriotic and sentimental pieces in poetry and prose, exclusively designed for recitation or reading. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald Publishers, ©1882. 12mo. 180 pp., [6 (ads)] ff.
$42.50

•  Whittier, Harte, Southey, Wordsworth, Longfellow, O. Meredith, and "Samuel S. Clemens." Also a ditty beginning, "There once was a Turk who ate tenpenny nails." (What he died of, was a "boardinghouse steak"!)

•  Ornate, polychromatic Victorian-era front wrapper. A later paste-over changes the price from 30 cents to 40 cents. Excellent condition.

"The Idiot Lad" — "The Women of Mumbles Head"

•  Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Charles Dickens, and a number of mostly-forgotten women. Back cover offers Stunt Songs for Social Sings, including "I Want to Be a Jolly Girl."

•  Ornate, polychromatic Victorian-era front wrapper. Excellent condition.

"Uncle Billy & the Civil Rights Bill"
"Satan & the Grog Seller"

•  Landor, Longfellow, Addison, Harte, Whittier, Twain, and Mary Mapes Dodge—also "Wyoming Kit," a "polyglot effusion" on "the Chinese Question," and a parody of Hood, "The Song of the Flirt." Good Books are listed on the back cover.

•  Ornate, polychromatic Victorian-era front wrapper. A later paste-over changes the price from 30 cents to 40 cents. Excellent condition.

So, Will You Hear "Polly's Lecture to Dolly" or!
"Dot Lambs Wot Mary Haf Got"?

•  Insufferably cute children surely learned whole portions of this volume by heart, and entertained adults with their skill upon parental demand.

•  Plain light blue wrappers printed in black.

“Adam Never Was a Boy . . .”

•  Poetry about dolls, games, friends, etc., and other offerings meant to instill patriotism.

•  Publisher's off-white wrappers printed in black and with a list of “some good books” on the back wrapper. Small tear at top edge of front wrapper. A very nice copy. (10458)

One for Tiny Tots

•  Buy this for your tot, make him/her learn eight items by rote, and enter the darling in a talent show

•  Publisher's pale blue wrappers printed in red. A fine copy. (7945)

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The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company