Dorothy's new jacket

Dorothy's new jacket arrived in the mail today.


My beat-up, signed copy of Dorothy Parker's 1933 collection of short stories, After Such Pleasures, now has something nice to wear over the old fraying threads she was sporting when I found her a few months ago. Before pictures are here in a previous post.

I purchased a first edition from Argosy Book Store in New York for the jacket. They had the best copy available, price-wise, and the jacket ain't that great, but it'll do for the price.

The book is a first edition, so presumably the jacket is first state unless somebody did with it what I've just done with it--marry it to another book. I'm putting this first state jacket on my second printing of After Such Pleasures.


For this book, I wouldn't spend the extra money adding a jacket, but this book was special despite its flaws. It had that nice inscription in it from Dorothy Parker.


So she was begging for a jacket and now she has one. And, of course, you know that...

Bibliophiles seldom collect it
If the book lacks a jacket.

Okay, that was a lame attempt at parodying Parker's famous couplet:

Men seldom make passes
at girls who wear glasses.

Couldn't resist it; it was too easy.

As a bonus, the First Edition I bought had a bookseller's ticket affixed inside the rear cover (I collect and write about these occasionally on Bibliophemera). It's for House of Books Ltd, located at 555 Madison Ave. in New York.


This is why I brought up Argosy before. It looks like this Dorothy Parker stayed in New York the past 77 years, which is longer than the author lived (73). I don't know how far Argosy is from House of Books or what used to be House of Books, but it can't be that far. Now the book has retired down South for awhile.

It's warmer down here. No need for a jacket anyway.