LARDNER, Ring W.

Regular Fellows I Have Met

First edition. Thick quarto. Stiff green suede wrappers tied with silk cord as issued. Small dampstain on the front fly, and a somewhat larger dampstain affecting the edges of the last several pages, spine slightly faded, a couple of minor tears to the yapped edges, else a handsome, very good or better copy, housed in a custom cloth clamshell case. 200 leaves printed on deckle-edged thick paper interleaved with tissue page guards, each page contains a caricature of a Lardner friend, many or perhaps most either in sporting garb or engaged in one or another sporting activity, with a small caricature of Lardner observing each of them, and a limerick about each person. Among the notables are Ban Johnson, Charles Comiskey, golfer Chick Evans, Kid Gleason (manager of the White Sox), and August Herrman (owner of the Reds). Aside from a handful of other baseball executives, the vast majority of the individuals included are Chicago businessmen, professionals, and politicians, with a smattering of actors and journalists thrown in. According to Bruccoli and Layman in their Ring W. Lardner: A Descriptive Bibliography, where this appears as item number A10 this "was a subscription (or mug book) sold to the men included in the text. Unknown number of copies." Exceptionally scarce. While some copies are held by institutional libraries, we have never seen another copy offered in the trade, and the last copy in original binding to appear at auction was in 1985.

[BTC #68595]