Sometimes everything just comes together. David from Manhattan read my Saturday post about a rare copy of Phantasmagorey that was both signed and inscribed by the illustrator Edward Gorey. I had noted that it was the first inscribed Gorey book to appear on the blog and that as such it was no doubt scarce. David writes:
I must admit I hadn't thought of a Gorey book inscription as being rare, and if you had held a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you if the one signed Gorey book I own was inscribed. But it turns out it is, and to Burt Britton, book collector, dealer and celebrity portrait collector extraordinaire. Instant Lives by Howard Moss is a unique collection of humorous "essays" and "fictions" about various famous authors, artists, composers and performers with wittily staged mini biographies and the occasional parody. Gorey contributed 25 drawings and designed the front & back covers, the latter being nothing more than a wreath which floated from the front cover and might be Edward Gorey's most extreme example of minimalism in his drawings. There is no suggestion that Mr. Britton ever opened the book, other than to drop in the printed slips, a selling point that James Cummin's catalog listing chose not to mention, though it persuaded me to part with $125. I never met or caught a glimpse of Gorey, but I once had a casual deli meal with Howard Moss, poetry editor of The New Yorker, and a wonderful poet himself, when I was in college, and coincidentally a few weeks after Instant Lives was published.
Note: My thanks to David from Manhattan for his years of reading my musings and so thoughtfully responding to them. The scans here are all his, of course. This is David's sixtieth contribution to this blog! The rest of you are just slackers.
I myself glimpsed Edward Gorey once or twice at the New York City Ballet but I never approached him. Furthermore, I never had deli with Howard Moss.
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