MENCKEN, HENRY LOUIS. Ventures into Verse. Being Various Ballads, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, Songs, Quatrains, Odes and Roundels. All Rescued from the Potters' Field of Old Files and here Given Decent Burial...By Henry Louis Mencken. With Illustrations & Other Things by Charles S. Gordon & John Siegel. Baltimore: Marshall, Beek & Gordon 1903. 8vo, 46 pp., original brown wrappers, white paper label on front cover printed in red, spine split and partially reglued, fore-edge of front cover slightly frayed; half morocco folding case. FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S RARE FIRST BOOK, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by the author on front flyleaf: "To Theodore Hemberger from H.L. Mencken. June 1908." Laid in is an autograph letter signed from Mencken presenting this copy, Baltimore, 12 June [1908], 1 page, 4to, on Mencken's imprinted letterhead, fold tears repaired with tape on verso: "I'm sorry I could find no bound copy [i.e., a copy bound in boards] of my 'Ventures.' I send one of the paper-covers as it came from the press -- typographical errors and all. Considering its small size it contains a miraculous number of printer's mistakes. This stuff was written when I was very young. The first poem, 'To R.K.' (Rudyard Kipling) was done in 1897, when I was 17...So be gentle!" The recipient Hemberger was a close German friend of Mencken's in Baltimore, "'Who taught me a great deal about music, and with whom I was in constant association during the difficult days of the World War'" (Mencken quoted in Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 7). Hemberger was the virtual dedicatee of Mencken's A Little Book in C Major (1916).Apparently 100 copies of Ventures into Verse were originally printed. Betty Adler in A Census of 'Ventures into Verse' (Baltimore, 1972), located 42 copies (this copy oddly not included). Since then, this copy to Hemberger and some three other copies have been noted (of these approximately 46 copies most were bound in boards, the remainder in wrappers). Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 5. (2)

MENCKEN, HENRY LOUIS. Ventures into Verse. Being Various Ballads, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, Songs, Quatrains, Odes and Roundels. All Rescued from the Potters' Field of Old Files and here Given Decent Burial...By Henry Louis Mencken. With Illustrations & Other Things by Charles S. Gordon & John Siegel. Baltimore: Marshall, Beek & Gordon 1903. 8vo, 46 pp., original brown wrappers, white paper label on front cover printed in red, spine split and partially reglued, fore-edge of front cover slightly frayed; half morocco folding case. FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S RARE FIRST BOOK, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by the author on front flyleaf: "To Theodore Hemberger from H.L. Mencken. June 1908." Laid in is an autograph letter signed from Mencken presenting this copy, Baltimore, 12 June [1908], 1 page, 4to, on Mencken's imprinted letterhead, fold tears repaired with tape on verso: "I'm sorry I could find no bound copy [i.e., a copy bound in boards] of my 'Ventures.' I send one of the paper-covers as it came from the press -- typographical errors and all. Considering its small size it contains a miraculous number of printer's mistakes. This stuff was written when I was very young. The first poem, 'To R.K.' (Rudyard Kipling) was done in 1897, when I was 17...So be gentle!" The recipient Hemberger was a close German friend of Mencken's in Baltimore, "'Who taught me a great deal about music, and with whom I was in constant association during the difficult days of the World War'" (Mencken quoted in Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 7). Hemberger was the virtual dedicatee of Mencken's A Little Book in C Major (1916). Apparently 100 copies of Ventures into Verse were originally printed. Betty Adler in A Census of 'Ventures into Verse' (Baltimore, 1972), located 42 copies (this copy oddly not included). Since then, this copy to Hemberger and some three other copies have been noted (of these approximately 46 copies most were bound in boards, the remainder in wrappers). Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 5. (2)

Details

MENCKEN, HENRY LOUIS. Ventures into Verse. Being Various Ballads, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, Songs, Quatrains, Odes and Roundels. All Rescued from the Potters' Field of Old Files and here Given Decent Burial...By Henry Louis Mencken. With Illustrations & Other Things by Charles S. Gordon & John Siegel. Baltimore: Marshall, Beek & Gordon 1903. 8vo, 46 pp., original brown wrappers, white paper label on front cover printed in red, spine split and partially reglued, fore-edge of front cover slightly frayed; half morocco folding case. FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S RARE FIRST BOOK, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by the author on front flyleaf: "To Theodore Hemberger from H.L. Mencken. June 1908." Laid in is an autograph letter signed from Mencken presenting this copy, Baltimore, 12 June [1908], 1 page, 4to, on Mencken's imprinted letterhead, fold tears repaired with tape on verso: "I'm sorry I could find no bound copy [i.e., a copy bound in boards] of my 'Ventures.' I send one of the paper-covers as it came from the press -- typographical errors and all. Considering its small size it contains a miraculous number of printer's mistakes. This stuff was written when I was very young. The first poem, 'To R.K.' (Rudyard Kipling) was done in 1897, when I was 17...So be gentle!" The recipient Hemberger was a close German friend of Mencken's in Baltimore, "'Who taught me a great deal about music, and with whom I was in constant association during the difficult days of the World War'" (Mencken quoted in Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 7). Hemberger was the virtual dedicatee of Mencken's A Little Book in C Major (1916).

Apparently 100 copies of Ventures into Verse were originally printed. Betty Adler in A Census of 'Ventures into Verse' (Baltimore, 1972), located 42 copies (this copy oddly not included). Since then, this copy to Hemberger and some three other copies have been noted (of these approximately 46 copies most were bound in boards, the remainder in wrappers). Adler, Mencken Bibliography, p. 5. (2)