A group of five first editions by James Thurber was sold at auction Sunday for $250 plus buyer's premium. It seems to be a very good price, as it includes the sheet music to "The Cat and the Riddle," (1924) an Ohio State University three day musical production currently selling on eBay for $400 all on its own. Thurber wrote the lyrics to two of the songs in the program as well as whatever dialogue, now lost, held the show together. The sheet music is relatively scarce and was unavailable to Edwin T. Bowden when he compiled his Thurber biography in 1968.
That $250 hammer price also bought the winning bidder a copy of Amorocco (1925). This one Bowden indeed had a copy of, but he decided not to include it as a verifiable Thurber work:
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| Bowden, Edwin T. James Thurber: A Bibliography. Ohio State University Press, 1968, p. 211 |
Nevertheless, Amorocco remains a Thurber curiosity. Why did the auctioneer not photograph it, alone of the five books in the lot? Did we really need to see both copies of Fables for Our Time (1940) instead?
The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1933) might just be Thurber's wittiest book title ever—if there weren't so many others.
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| James Thurber Mike Clum, Inc., Auctions listing accessed May 1, 2021 |
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