The Ford Theatre Lincoln Assassination Playbills: A Study

Philadelphia: Privately Printed, 1937. Hardcover. Small 4to. Burgundy cloth with gilt lettering. 16pp. Captioned tissue-guarded frontispiece, illustrations. Near fine. Minor scuffing at left edge of front board (only), else tight and pristine and internally fine. Superb first and only edition, a useful comparison of authentic against phony playbills. Rear colophon note limitation of 75 numbered copies (this #29). This exceptional copy is also boldly signed in full by Brenner at the close of his "Foreword page -- PLUS it includes the seldom-seen "Supplement" published on February 12, 1940 -- a rather homespun small 8vo production in plain stiff blue wrappers with typed label. Fine. This too is stamped #29, so presumably he produced 75 copies of this as well. (3pp). Foldout illustration. Instructions at close state, "Please preserve the envelope in which this is received, as it is requested that it be simply pasted face down inside of the back cover of my Ford's Theater Playbills book, -- a copy of which is in your collection -- thereby forming a pocket for the supplement booklet herewith. The result then will be uniform in all copies and tend to prevent loss of the pamphlet, of which there are no extra copies...." The owner of this copy followed these instructions to the letter and tipped to the book's rear pastedown is the pamphlet's buff transmittal envelope. Owner of this copy also lightly pencils a couple of typographical corrections in the book and inks two small typographical corrections in the pamphlet. A VERY scarce pair. A Chicago publisher named The American Scene apparently published a 160-copy facsimile of Brenner pre-1989, but little else is known about this reprint except that it too is rarely found. MONAGHAN 3555.