Boxed Thurber
The only two Thurber boxed books in the Spill library are shown below (a modern box is out there, but I’m only focusing on books published during his lifetime. The first set, produced in September of 1959, boxes The Thurber Carnival and Alarms and Diversions. Carnival was originally published in 1945; Alarms and Diversions in 1957.
This box was handed to me in a University of Connecticut parking lot up in Storrs, following an exhibit there of Liza Donnelly‘s cartoons and my own. A parting gift extraordinaire from the exhibit’s curator. I’d never seen the boxed set before (or since…although, like almost everything, it’s likely available online somewhere); the cherry on the top: the copy of the boxed Alarms is signed by Thurber.
The front and back of the box is identical. Two dancing birds appear on the spine.
The second box is less exciting graphically than the one above, but still, it’s a solid protective home for Further Fables for Our Time. The only graphics appear on the front side of the box; the rest of the sides are blank. This special box (limited to 3,000) was first published in December of 1956, two months after Further Fables hit book store shelves. Bowden’s James Thurber: A Bibliography tells us that there were two further boxed “states” published, with the third identical to the first. With that in mind, I’ve no idea if the Spill‘s box is the first state or third (it’s not the second because the second is identified as “Second Printing”).
A bonus in this particular copy (a gift from a friend many moons ago): three Thurber articles tucked inside. From Newsweek, February 4, 1957, “Thurber and His Humor”; from The Atlantic Monthly, August 1956 –Thurber was the cover story –“James Thurber: In Conversation With Alistair Cooke”; “Lions and Lemmings, Toads and Tigers” by Malcolm Cowley in The Reporter, December 13, 1956.
