The Maxims of Methuselah: Being the Advice Given by the Patriarch in his Nine Hundred Sixty and Ninth Year to his Great Grandson at Shem’s Coming of Age in Regard to Women.

BURGESS, Gelett.

$125.00

Item Number: 119078

New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1907.

First edition of the humorist’s colorful take on the Battle of the Sexes. Octavo, original half cloth, with illustrations, decorations, and cover design by Louis D. Fancher. Very good in the rare original dust jacket which is in very good condition.

An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, American humorist Gelett Burgess was best known as a writer of nonsense verse, such as "The Purple Cow", and for introducing French modern art to the United States in an essay titled "The Wild Men of Paris". Profusely illustrated by Louis Fancher, The Maxims of Methuselah offers a wildly satirical and near-Biblical take on the Battle of the Sexes.