Latest Addition to The Spill Library…The UK Thurber Carnival
James Thurber’s The Thurber Carnival has been, and always will be my #1 Thurber book, if not my #1 book. There are reasons aplenty, but the most important (to me) is that it contains “What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?” — the first Thurber drawing I ever saw — the drawing that (as I’ve said on more than one or three occasions) changed my life.
Left: (I did this desert island drawing of a fellow reading the Carnival for a Spill post in 2021)
That first sighting of Millmoss was in a copy of The Thurber Carnival (published in 1945), not in 1943’s collection, Men, Women and Dogs * and not in the July 14, 1934 New Yorker where the drawing was originally published**
Just the other day I came upon a listing for a really nice UK edition of the Carnival (“really nice” meaning it had an intact dust jacket, and was relatively inexpensive). Since the Spill library did not have a UK edition, I pounced. A bonus of sorts: it’s another step in collecting all of Thurber’s UK titles.
There’s the just arrived Carnival below (second from the right), comfortably seated between a US (book club) copy and an Australian copy (far right) just found a few weeks ago.
Here are some of the many variations/editions of The Thurber Carnival out there:
*Below: Men, Women And Dogs — where Millmoss was first collected.
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**Below: The New Yorker July 14, 1934 — where Millmoss was first published.
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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