The Happy Humorists: Poems that Click with Good Cheer
By
Alfred Osmond
New Century Printing Company, The Deseret News Press Salt Lake City, Utah 1932
Alfred Osmond (1862-1938), a Mormon poet and teacher, taught creative writing at Brigham Young University and, from 1920-1923, was the first chair of the English Department. He also served as chair of the university's Student Publications Committee from 1929 to 1930. During the 1930s he led a literary society at the university, which included both faculty and students. According to genealogical sources, he apparently was the great uncle of entertainers Donny and Marie Osmond. 200 p.: five black and white illustrations by C. Nelson White (1893-1981) who was born in Denmark (as Rasmus Christian Hviid Nielsen) and educated there, and who had his first drawing, a pen and ink sketch, published when he was 13 years old in a Danish publication. He would continue to produce hunorous drawings and became a well-known and popular illustrator in Copenhagen. Having studied English for five years, he emigrated in 1914 to Salt Lake City, Utah, after having been baptized into the Mormon religion in Denmark, which prompted some negative family reaction. In the United States he continued his artistic endeavors, illustrating for an official periodical of The Church of Latter-day Saints, entitled The Children's Friend, co-founding the Howell-White Advertising Illustrators Company in Salt Lake City which lasted until the mid-1940s, while also illustrating for some of the major American journals, such as the Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, the Ladies Home Journal, and McCalls, and for the Deseret News and Tribune. From the early 1950s until his retirement in 1968 he worked for the United States government at the Sandia atomic weapons training base in New Mexico, using his illustrating skills to create designs on secret documents and illustrations for atomic weapons training courses. He died in Salt Lake City in 1981. 19.5 cm. (7.75 inches). Dark blue pebbled cloth, with gilt-stamped front-cover title. No dust jacket.
First Edition
"Although none of the following poems have ever before been published in newspapers, magazines or book form, many of my most intimate friends are acquainted with some of the verses, because they have heard me read them in public places. Those I have read have been so well received that I believe a friendly welcome is waiting them and their companion poems in the larger and richer field in which I am now transplanting them. I wrote the verses for relief, rest, relaxation, and enjoyment. I am publishing them that others may enjoy the spirit of fun and frolic in which they are enveloped. The language of the poems is the everyday speech of plain people" [from the Foreword]. In all, there are 25 poems by Alfred Osmond.
Book is in Very Good Minus Condition: complete with all pages and illustrations, pages bright and intact, no rips, tears, chips; a few pages with foxing or soiling. Endpapers with some brown offset. Back cover soiled; both ends of the spine and the corners with some wear. Rather Scarce!
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