"It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day..."

Knowles, Frederic Lawrence (Editor). [Ernest Lawrence Thayer]

A Treasury of Humorous Poetry; Being a Compilation of Witty, Facetious, and Satirical Verse Selected from the Writings of British and American Poets [and first appearance of "Casey at the Bat" in an anthology]

Boston: Dana Estes & Company, (1902). First printing. 15 Black & White Tissue-Guarded Plates. Full cloth. Octavo. xxiv, 407 pages. Very good. Bound in white cloth with gilt-stamped spine and upper board, top edge gilt. Some light overall soil, some rubs to extremities. Protected in a custom-cut 4 mil Mylar jacket.

This handsome volume of poems contains the first book appearance of baseball's most famous poem--Casey at the Bat--in an anthology. The poem was written by Ernest Lawrence Thayer but is incorrectly attributed to one Joseph Quinlan Murphy herein.

Casey saw his print debut in 1888 in the San Francisco Daily Examiner, and De Wolf Hopper then popularized it throughout the country through his booming recitations. The poem was printed as an exhibit in a Harvard class secretary's report in 1900, and then as a pamphlet in 1901 before being included in this handsome little volume of comic verse the following year.

This is the first state of the first printing, with Casey attributed to the wrong author. Binding variant here is white cloth with gilt stamped titles, border rule, and illustration of the face of a jester on a stick encircled with laurels to upper board, similar elements in gilt on spine. Top edge gilt.

Gift inscription on front free endpaper dated 1904.

Item #1100

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