Bonus late-night post!
My wife and I sold these two books yesterday, and I wanted scan and share the covers -- which are both wonderful in their own way -- before shipping them off to their happy new homes.
It's fun to compare and contrast these two books, which were published 108 years apart -- one during the Ulysses S. Grant presidency and one during the Jimmy Carter presidency.
At the top we have the dark-green cover of Diocletian Lewis' non-fiction tome "Our Girls", which was published in 1871. Lewis spent much of his career promoting good hygiene, clean living and physical exercise. Some chapter titles in "Our Girls" include:
- Girls' Boots and Shoes
- How Girls Should Walk
- The Language of Dress
- Outrages Upon the Body
- Stockings Supporters
- Employments for Women
- A Short Sermon About Matrimony
- A Word About Baths
And then we have 1979's "Advanced D&D Monster Manual" by Gary Gygax.
I love the style of illustrations on this cover. It takes me back to my 1980s childhood, when I wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons but had to settle for getting my fantasy fix from Tom Hanks' "Mazes and Monsters" and Intellivision cartridges.
The chapters in the "Monster Manual" include:
- Basilisk
- Black pudding
- Centaur
- Gar, giant
- Gelatinous cube
- Kobold
- Owlbear
- Troglodyte
- Wyvern
- Xorn
And so we have an 1871 book on the raising of proper young ladies and a 1979 book on terrible and fantastic creatures that might give those same young ladies nightmares.
That sets things up perfectly for Tuesday's post, which will mark the birthday of a somewhat obscure individual who secretly spent a lifetime weaving both of those themes together into a master work. Any guesses?
Footnote
1. To which I would say: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
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