Two weeks ago today I Spilled about getting hold of the 1950 21st anniversary edition of James Thurber & E.B. White’s Is Sex Necessary? (and not too long before that I mentioned buying a 1990 modern edition). This past Sunday, after some time browsing at my favorite used bookstore, Rogers Book Barn, I was about to head out the door when I spotted a stack of (UK) Penguin paperbacks horizontal on a shelf behind the register (all that orange in a row caught my eye). I asked the proprietor, Maureen Rogers if there were any Thurber books in the pile, and she said, “Well, come back and take a look.”
Sure enough, there was a 1960 UK Penguin edition of Is Sex Necessary? — which caused Ms. Rogers to laugh (because on my last visit to her store I bought the aforementioned 1990 edition of Is Sex Necessary?).
With this latest addition, the Spill library now has a quartet of the UK editions, with more to come (I hope).
An updated group photo:
Publication dates, top row, l-r: 1929, 1950, 1950, 1960. Bottom row, l-r: 1964, 1975, 1977, 1990
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James Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website