(#96011) SEVEN SMILES AND A FEW FIBS. Thomas Vivian.

SEVEN SMILES AND A FEW FIBS. London, New York: F. Tennyson Neely Publisher, [1897]. Small octavo, pp. [1-9] 10-195 [196: blank] [197-206: ads], illustrations, original pictorial gray green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in red, black and silver, rear panel stamped in red and black, t.e.g. First edition. Issued as part of Neely's "Prismatic Library." A collection of short fiction, dedicated to William Randolph Hearst, written by a journalist associated with the Hearst papers in New York and San Francisco. All but one of the nine "Fibs" are sensational, fantastic or criminous stories; "The Protoplasmic Misadventures of Hans Jorgensen," a science fiction horror story of the discovery of jelly-like living prehistoric organic matter preserved on an uncharted volcanic island in the North Pacific near the Aleutian Islands; "Down to the Medulla," a vivisectionist experimenting with the human brain turns a condemned criminal into a living vegetable; "Taken Under Advisement," a clever tale of a killer who almost outwits the law; "Old Lick's Ghost: A California Christmas Story," a rationalized ghost story; "If Thine Enemy Thirst," a horrific revenge story set in a lifeboat at sea after a shipwreck; "He Kept the Engagement," a romantic courtship story; "The Magic Mirror," a sailor gives his sweetheart an ancient Persian mirror in which she sees his fatal love affair with another man's wife; "How I Had 'Em! A Blue-Ribbon Romance," a hallucinating drunk is tormented by the Devil and his Imps; "To Freeze Out England," a humorous tall tale in which the Fenians plot to change the climate in England by blocking the Gulf Stream; the project is stalled due to lack of money to buy bricks. Stories and sketches in the style of Bierce, Morrow and Milne, although not as polished. Vivian "had a fondness for the fanciful and could make the seemingly impossible appear very probable ... Vivian was gifted with a vivid imagination, which enabled him to conceive the impossible and describe it as an actuality in a convincing manner. He wrote many special articles for the SUNDAY CHRONICLE, and struck a novel note as often as any writer for the American press." - Young, Journalism in California, pp. 103 and 132. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Not in Hubin (1994). Wright (III) 5701 (citing a 1900 Fenno edition). Not in Baird and Greenwood. Cloth rubbed at spine ends and corner tips, several small soil marks to rear cover, a tight, internally clean, very good copy. This Neely first edition is quite scarce. (#96011).

Price: $450.00

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