Hans Breitmann’s party. With other ballads.
Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers, 1868. 8vo. 32 pp. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. Original wrappers printed in red and black backed with tape at an early date; wrappers chipped on edges, otherwise a wonderful copy with an excellent interior and very wide margins. Preserved in a contemporary calf-backed cloth case, author, title and date on the spine in gilt. Item #19253
First edition, first issue of these humorous sketches written in German-American. “The reader laughs at the fantastic drollery of these ballads ... Its instrument is not a dialect or patois characterizing a race or locality, but merely the broken English of the half-Americanized German fellow-citizen, which varies according to accident or individual clumsiness, and is not nearly so fixed in form, or so descriptive of generic facts and ideas, as the Irish brogue. We own it is funny; and for once it did very well. Indeed, few American poems have been held in better or more constant remembrance than the ballad of Hans Breitmann’s Party. It is one of those perennials, which, when not blossoming in the newspapers, are carefully preserved in many scrap-books, and, worn down to the quick with handling, and with only enough paper and print about them to protect the immortal germ, are carried round in infinite waistcoat-pockets” (The Atlantic, October, 1868).
Leland (1824-1903) was a Philadelphia-born writer and journalist. In addition to this work and his studies of folklore he was a pioneer of art and design education.
BAL, 11554.
Price: $450.00