The Cosmic Jest: A Grove Play.

KELLAND, Clarence Budington; Music by Frank R. Denke; [Herbert Hoover].

$800.00

Item Number: 146694

San Francisco: Bohemian Club, 1949.

First edition of this Bohemian Club Grove play. Octavo, original half cloth with pictorial boards, printed with music by Frank R. Denke. Boldly signed by Herbert Hoover and the author, Clarence Budington Kelland, on the dedication page. Additionally signed by another member of the Bohemian Club. In very good condition with light rubbing and toning.

Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, The Bohemian Club soon developed into a private men's-only club, offering wider membership to businessmen, entrepreneurs, university presidents, and military commanders. Every year, the club hosts a two-week-long camp retreat at Bohemian Grove, which is notable for its illustrious guest list and its eclectic Cremation of Care ceremony which mockingly burns an effigy of "Care" (the normal woes of life) with grand pageantry, pyrotechnics, and brilliant costumes, all done at the edge of a lake and at the base of a forty-foot concrete owl statue. The Grove Play is an annual theatrical production written, produced and performed by and for Bohemian Club members, and staged outdoors in California at the Bohemian Grove each summer.