Ten of the Best New Yorker Cartoon Collections from the Golden Age

Here, in no particular order, are my favorite New Yorker cartoon collections from the mythic golden age; roughly speaking that's the mid 1930s through the mid 1950s.  Gluyas Williams' collection slightly predates the era, but what the heck -- it's a great collection by one of the best.  Thurber should be on the list and Steinberg and George Price, but I've benched them so that others could have a shot.  Alan Dunn should be here too ( and, to be honest, a number more, but I'll fix all that when I get around to making another list.

Scans of the book covers (sorry, some aren't good quality ) follow the list.

1. Charles Addams:  Addams and Evil  (Random House, 1947.  Introduction by Wolcott Gibbs). Great title, great cover, classic Addams cartoons.

2.  Peter Arno:  Ladies and Gentlemen  (Simon and Schuster, 1951).  Arno's hand-picked greatest hits.  He wrote the Foreword, as only he could.  

3.  Carl Rose:  One Dozen Roses (Random House, 1946).  Rose's only collection, and it's a beaut.  A great surprise at the end: Rose's written & illustrated  piece about Harold Ross, " An Artist's Best Friend is His Editor"

4.  Mary Petty:  This Petty Place (Knopf, 1945. Introduction by James Thurber).  Petty's only collection;  a handful of her covers are reproduced in color.

5.  Garrett Price: Drawing Room Only (Coward, McCann, 1946). Spectacular cover artist and cartoonist.

6.  Helen Hokinson:  The Hokinson Festival ( Dutton, 1956).  Published seven years after her untimely death, with a memoir by her long-time collaborator ( he wrote many of her captions), James Reid Parker. A handful of Hokinson's covers are reproduced in color.

7.  William Steig: The Steig Album (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1953).   Seven of his books, pre-Shrek,  collected in one thick volume.

8.  Gluyas Williams: The Gluyas Williams Book (Doubleday, Donan & Co., 1929).  A  particular favorite of Harold Ross, Williams had few peers handling a full page in the New Yorker.

9.  Richard Taylor: The Better Taylors (Random House, 1944). One of the unsung masters of the age.

10.  The New Yorker Album of 1942 (Random House, 1941). The tenth Album in the series;  the cover by Perry Barlow originally appeared on the December 23, 1939 issue of The New Yorker. According to The New York Times,  Barlow was partially colorblind -- his wife, Dorothy Hope Smith, was responsible for coloring in his work.