Format: hardcover, orange cloth covered boards with gold lettering on front and spine, includes dust jacket in poor condition.
Length: 102 pages [unpaginated]
Size: approximately 8 5/8" by 11 1/4"
Illustrations: approximately 100 full-page plates, including eight color plates.
Description: Preface by James Thurber. A collection of Mary Petty's satirical illustrations, many of which were originally published in The New Yorker. The book offers a window into the idiosyncrasies of early 20th-century American high society through Petty's detailed and humorous artwork. According to the Preface, “Mary Petty began to draw for the New Yorker eighteen years ago, when she was just a slip of a girl and the magazine was only two years old going on three. It had first ventured upon the crowded and indifferent newsstands in the middle of the great Marathon Phase of American life . . . Now that the pieces of Miss Petty's work have been dug out of the files and fitted together into an eloquent whole, it must become clear to the tinkerers that the words of her captions and the lines of her drawings are all of a piece. The Petty idiom and point of view, like the Petty draughtsmanship, are intensely original and personal. What this artist has is not a trick, but a magic, and magics are not transferable.”
Condition: The binding is sound. The cloth covers are faded and lightly soiled. The interior is clean and crisp. The dust jacket is in poor condition.