An interesting copy of The Chas Addams Mother Goose (New York: Windmill Books, 1967) came up on the AbeBooks platform this past May, offered for $700 by a Middlebury, Vermont, bookseller named—I kid you not—Browsing Is Arousing. The book was described as signed and inscribed by Charles Addams with an original drawing of a hockey player. The only seller image, alas, was a tiny thumbnail of the front dust cover which only got blurrier when enlarged.
I was quite naturally intrigued by all this but I was unwilling to commit $700 to this book as I sometimes do in my Sight Unseen ventures. This time I wanted to see this hockey player to make certain it was the genuine work of Addams. The seller complied with my request for an image, explaining that the endpaper was a deep blue and that he had eliminated the color from his image.
The handwriting and signature struck me as genuine, as did the drawing. I was delighted to see that the hockey player is none other than Pugsley of the Addams Family. Addams signed it in the year of publication. So I went ahead and bought the book, taking it off the AbeBooks market:
Here then are my own images of the book. Write if you prefer thumbnails.
No doubt there is a story behind a copy of the cartoon collection Nightcrawlers (1957) which was signed by Charles Addams in 1973, some sixteen years after publication. It is inscribed by the artist to Glenn Shea with a "large" drawing of Morticia, who is tall and thin enough to dominate a page.
Charles Addams AbeBooks listing accessed May 10, 2026
Original Charles Addams art published in The New Yorker issue of February 8, 1947 shows a theater full of moviegoers and their shared reaction to a big screen scream.
Charles Addams Original art The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27
Seventy years after publication, the artwork to this classic cartoon was sold at Swann Auction Galleries in the Illustration Art sale:
Charles Addams Swann Galleries listing of December 14, 2017
Swann, it will be noted, did not provide the publication date in The New Yorker, or even the year. They did document the drawing's appearances in three Addams collections, but the 1947 book is correctly titled Addams and Evil.
Charles Addams Swann Galleries item description
With such a classic original selling for $31,200 (including the 30% buyer's premium), well above the 2017 presale estimate of $12,000 to $18,000, one might wonder what an Addams rough drawing of the same subject might be worth in today's market. Well, thanks to Swann Galleries's recent Illustration Art sale, we actually can provide the answer. An unusually detailed pencil study from a Vermont collection went up on the auction block in December of 2025. Perhaps the owners were aware that Swann had sold the original finished drawing eight years earlier.
Charles Addams Preliminary art The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 27
Charles Addams Swann Galleries listing of December 4, 2025
Despite the above, the correct date of publication in The New Yorker is February 8, 1947, as I've already indicated.
Note that in the intervening years, Swann's top buyer's premium has come down from 30% to 27%. There's something to be said for competition. Still, $9,525 with said premium is a remarkable price for a New Yorker rough. Indeed, many Addams New Yorker originals in this blog's archives have sold for less than that. Today, though, Addams's work continues to appreciate and that seems to be carrying over even to the roughs.
Here's the relevant page from Addams and Evil (1947):
I have a fair degree of confidence that the spot artist on the page opposite the Addams drawing is Morris Neuwirth (1912-1985) and that the toll lanes depicted here relate to something built by Robert Moses. Some of Neuwirth's work is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stop Pay Toll Morris Neuwirth The New Yorker, February 8, 1947, p. 26
On Sunday I visited the New York Public Library to catch the exhibition "A Century of The New Yorker." The show's banner is behind the library lion known as Patience.
It's always best to start at Beginnings, but I will not be strictly chronological here.
Introduction with some of the magazine's library covers:
Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant started it all in 1925 (with the financial backing of Raoul Fleischmann).
The magazine's prospectus sold the idea of The New Yorker.
Rea Irvin's original artwork of the dandy we call Eustace Tilley is iconic.
A spot drawing of showgirls is by the pioneering cartoonist Barbara Shermund.
Some drawings of the city by Reginald Marsh circa the 1930s adorn the show as well.
What! No Pie Charts? has text by humorist Corey Ford and pictures by Julian de Miskey.
Preliminary art from 1934 is by Reginald Marsh for "It's her first lynching."
Giddap is a 1930 etching by Hale Woodruff.
J. D. Salinger gets his start in the pages of The New Yorker:
A spot drawing of a bus stop sign by K. Sterne:
A 1939 photograph of Dorothy Parker:
A lovely 1947 spot drawing by Susan Flint:
A 1946 pony edition of The New Yorker sent to servicemen overseas has a cover by James Thurber featuring several varieties of his dogs.
A 1940 photograph of "Letter from Paris" correspondent Janet Flanner, or Genêt, is by Carl Van Vechten.
A Fact Checking Department banner by Anne Mortimer-Maddox, c. 1970:
A 1948 photograph of New Yorker staff members and a fact checking memo from Frederick Packard to Ross:
An after-hours spot drawing by Garth Williams:
"This is going on all over!" The magazine increases its circulation outside of New York City.
A synchronous spot drawintg by Virginia Snedeker:
Original cartoon art by Helen E. Hokinson:
"I want to report a winking man."
And original art by Charles Addams, c. 1945. You may recognize the witch as Morticia, but this is well before Addams Family members had been given names.
"Oh, I couldn't make it Friday—I've so many things to do. It's the thirteenth, you know."
A full issue in 1946 was dedicated to John Hersey's "Hiroshima."
Copycat!
Cover by Charles Alston:
A dynamic 1948 spot drawing by Esther Pressoir:
Onward!
A 1975 spot drawing by Tom Funk:
A weighty 1982 spot drawing by Margit Steig:
Lillian Ross and William Shawn in an undated photograph:
Office typewriters of Lillian Ross and William Shawn:
Hannah Arendt's draft of "Eichmann in Jerusalem:"
A 1987 letter from Si Newhouse to the New Yorker staff announces William Shawn's resignation as editor.
Subsequently, staff writers at The New Yorker urge Robert Gottlieb not to accept his new post as editor:
Floor plan (2020) by Luci Gutierrez:
Kara Walker develops a cover:
Art by Barry Blitt and Roz Chast from the collection of the current editor David Remnick:
A poster by Bruce McCall for The New Yorker Festival, 2001:
Art Spiegelman:
Saul Steinberg. You may have seen this one.
Edward Koren's cartoon represents The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest:
A 1973 spot drawing by David Preston:
Don't forget to look up.
Outside the exhibition, there's Rembrandt Peale's portrait of George Washington after Gilbert Stuart:
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