OT: not "jazz (not music)--1911?"

[George Thompson]

Once upon a time, I used to read regularly the two main bibliographic
quarterlies (The Library, from England, and PBSA).  One of them published a
review or other note on a project to reprint a series of late 19th C
collections of fairy and folk tales for children: the Blue Fairy Book, The
Red Fairy Book, &c, a dozen in all, edited by Andrew Lang.  I had bought the
whole set of the reprints and loved reading them to my children.  The
writers lacked any modern notion of "readability" or of the wickedness of
asking a child to absorb a sentence more than 7 words long, and so do I.  So
did my children, too.
The very attentive reviewer pointed out that in one of the stories, a fair
maiden was kept in a castle guarded by fierce ogres; but in the book as
originally published, she was guarded by fierce negroes.
I was filled with admiration for the sharp-eyed editor at the reprint house
who had spotted this, and (I suppose) with a sharp knife had cut out
"negroes", cut off the "ne", sliced up "groes" into 3 blocks --gr, o, es --
rearranged them, pasted "ogres" in, and sent the book to be photographed and
reproduced.
If I recall, I looked at the reprint to see this handiwork.  I don't recall
whether any further slicing had done to conceal the fact that a five letter
word was filling the space of a seven letter word.

GAT

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> You'll laugh.
>
> About thirty years ago I came across a modern paperback reprint of one of
> those very same "Frank Merriwell" books with a copyright date of something
> like 1915.
>
> As I began to examine it for slang, I soon discovered "chicken out," a
> quarter-century antedating!  And, OMG, something like "kooky"!  And, Great
> God Almighty, "cool"!
>
> Well, I'm not so dense that by that time I didn't catch on.  While 99% of
> the text read exactly like a ca1915 publication, an evil editorial genius
> had quietly gone through and updated all the slang in the teen dialogue to
> 1960's standards.
>
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 11:33 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: OT: not "jazz (not music)--1911?"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I am not sure what you meant, but I'll try to clarify what I said.
> >
> > I found volume 200 in the series that was originally published in 1911.
> > There is no other indication of the printing date, but the general
> > publisher's promo is attached in the back.
> >
> > I also found volume 211, which was originally published in 1912. This one
> > also has publisher's promo attached in the back, but also has a
> > comprehensive excerpt of the publisher's catalog, including listing of
> > books
> > to be published in 1929. From this I devised that the second volume (211)
> > was actually printed in 1928. I would not at all be surprised if the
> first
> > volume (200) was printed around the same time, but I have no overt
> > information one way or the other. Jon pointed to radio being mentioned,
> so
> > the ad must be 1922 or later.
> >
> > VS-)
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > At 9/6/2011 04:54 AM, victor steinbok wrote:
> > > >I found another volume in the series, this one with copyright date
> 1912,
> > > but
> > > >published in 1928 (the big hint is the list of books at the end that
> is
> > > "to
> > > >be published January 1929" or later). Still, this says nothing about
> the
> > > >date of the other book.
> > >
> > > The "big, clean, interesting books" became so popular in 1911 that
> > > the publisher had a tremendous backlog by 1912 that it didn't expect
> > > to clear up until after January 1929?
> > >
> > > (I write this only because I am presently tussling with 3 manuscript
> > > copies of the same original (which is not extant) that either claim
> > > or appear to date the original and themselves in confusing and
> > > inconsistent ways.)
> > >
> > > Joel
> > >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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