roaring twenties (2 Ergebnisse)

London, Dennison Manufacturing Co., 1927. 21 x 14 cm. Stapled. 40 p. Richly illustrated in black and white, centerfold in colours. 2nd edition. This cheerful regaling book explains all kinds of festive techniques especially for decorated cars and party rooms. Dennison Manufacturing Co. was founded by Aaron Lufkin Dennison and his brother Eliphalet Whorf Dennison as a factory of paper boxes for jewellery in 1844. By the 1920s it was a large international firm specializing in decorative paper like crêpe until it merged with another Dennison firm in 1990. The first edition not in Worldcat, only this second and last.

A total of 140pp. (i.e. 98pp., 12mo; 40pp., 8vo; 2pp., 4to). One letter (possibly incomplete) unsigned, the other 24 signed 'Dundas', with postscripts sometimes signed 'Das'. The three letters before the last addressed to 'Meredith', the other 22 addressed to 'Smut'. Of the 25 letters: 7 from 1926; 4 from 1927; 10 from 1928; 4 from 1929. The first five letters (to 19 November 1926) from London (three from 143 Como Road, Forest Hill, SE23; two from 406 Stanstead Road, Catford, SE6); the rest from Pennsylvania, with 15 from 621 Kelly Avenue, Wilkinsburg [Pittsburgh], and one each from 411 Pitt Street, Wilkinsburg; 510 Mifflin Avenue, Wilkinsburg; 839 E. Hutchinson Avenue, Edgewood, Pittsburgh; and letterheads of the Penn Albert Hotel, Greensburg, and the Penn Grove Hotel, Grove City. Between 1 March 1926 and 6 June 1929. An interesting correspondence, emphatically materialistic, and enthused with the youthful good humour and bullishness of a young Englishman who is attempting to make his way as an accountant (training with Price Waterhouse) in the 'Land of Opportunity'. Dundas adopts American mannerisms ('Gee boy!' and 'O.K.!'), and exhibits puerile humour ('We have been having an air polluting competition in the office this evening the chap next to me has won easily, but I've cheated him, for, having a cold, I couldn't smell him') and the characteristic casual racism of the period (from New York he writes 'And the Hutoo. I've never seen so many at once in my natural.'). References in the correspondence reveal that 'Dundas' is an'Old Erithian' (a former students of West Street School, Erith, Kent) and of Scottish extraction, and that at the start of the correspondence he works in an office in London. The recipient, with whom Dundas was at school, is in England, training to be an actuary. Topics include: the passage over; New York ('the chap we're staying with took us downtown in his Dodge'); Prohibition; prices (clothing, rent, chewing gum); Dundas's extensive amorous activities (including 'heavy necking') with a number of 'girls' ('Gee boy! We've got a nice little girl in this house. [.] She is by no means slow, In the pictures & in the car - Oh! Boy!!! - xxx'); hotels; his work travelling around the area surrounding Pittsburgh as an auditor; jazz; his studying at the Pittsburgh School of Accountancy; festivities in America; his acquistion of a piano; the climate; the relative qualities of American and English men and 'girls'; sports and recreations ('I am going to join the Minnetoska Club here. It is a canoe club, tennis, Baseball & swimming'); the motor car and 'autoists'; an account of a trip to Sligo ('a town so small, that, although it is only 100 miles away, most Pittsburghers have never heard of it'); his efforts as a photographer ('I have now completed an album containing all the fellows pictures [.] I have orders for 14 of them now & will probably have orders for 20 or so more [.] For once photography is paying me'); radio broadcasting ('Did you ever listen to the "Gold Spot Pals"? that was the broadcast of the Gold Spot Shoe Company'); road taxes. The correspondence begins with news of a dance, with some clues towards the author's identity: 'There weren't very many of our old crowd there, mainly people who left before we did. Have you see [sic] Woollatt just lately? Gee! he has grown. [.] Bob Horlock, Bell, Harry Cameron, Lilian Rayner, Doris Knott & one or two others were there.' With the third letter (26 April 1926) comes an announcement: 'now hold tight - Dad & I are trying to get to America, we have our names down for the next Quota, and expect to go about Sept or Oct, but of course there is nothing settled yet, and there are many slips twixt the cup and the lip.' On 11 November he reports that 'we got through our Medical Exam O.K. & that we have booked our passage on the Carmania sailing on the 27th inst'. A month later, on 14 December, he writes from Wilkinsburg to describe the passage over ('On Saturday night w.