Of Mirth and Jollity.

Item Details

Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1980, Wrappers

Only edition., Fine

7 7/8  x 5 1/2." [2], pp. [1]-11 + 3 unnumbered pp. Title page illustrated with red woodcut ornament by Eric Gill. Contains a prologue, excerpted passage, and a note on the text. 

Beige wrappers, sewn. With woodcut depicting a feast to front wrapper. A fine copy.

A Christmas keepsake from the William Andrews Clark Library, printed by Vance Gerry and Patrick Reagh.

One of 400 copies. OCLC lists copies held in 14 institutions worldwide.

From “A Note on the Text”: “The Clark Library is pleased to send Christmas greetings to its many friends with this keepsake excerpted from an eighteenth-century pamphlet celebrating the Spirit of Christmas Past.” Initially printed in 1730 by James Roberts in Warwick Lane, Round About Our Coal Fire examines the decline of holiday customs which had hitherto “bound master and tenant in the same social community.” “The excerpt reprinted here gives an amusing glimpse into a world far removed from ours, where holiday games and holiday humor were bawdy and often rough, a world where fat was as much a sign of success and prosperity as it was an inevitable consequence of all the beer and beef described.”