A Lauriston Garden of Verses, and Will Ransom, and random book luck

I've been updating my recent post on Edgar W. Smith's ouvre and the products of his 'Pamphlet House' press. 

In looking into this I picked up a copy of 'A Laurison Garden of Verses' by Helene Yuhasova. Summit, N.J.: The Pamphlet House, 1946, but printed at the Thorneycroft Press of Summit, NJ. p. [15]. Limited to 250 copies. 

Bruce Harris provided the images shown on that blog post and it's in great condition. My copy looks like it was dragged through a garden. Nevertheless, it was being sold at a scientist-friendly price. 

When I glanced at the inside rear wrapper, I spied a small private library stamp: Will Ransom Library Record. No. 3347, From E.W. Smith. Rec'd 10/27/48.

Who is Will Ransom? 

Will Ransom (1878-1955) was a designer of typefaces and other graphic, but also well known as a collector and bibliographer of private presses - a historian of printing. Ransom's notebooks and correspondence were organized prior to his death and donated to the Newberry Library - an independent research library in Chicago. The library has several of Smith's publications in its holdings. So as the operator of a private press, Smith was likely in touch with Ransom, and perhaps correspondence between them exists in the Ransom collection at Newberry.

What a nice find.

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A kind of neat circular feature of Smith's book 'Baker Street Inventory' is that he includes in the list of published bibliographies, the very book in which it is published: "The present bibliography". I've never seen that before - talk about being up-to-date at the time of printing!

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As a side-note, Smith has been on my mind, and yesterday my mind led me to Second Story books in Rockville. There in the little Sherlock section they have, I picked up a non-Sherlockian book by Doyle - 'Rodney Stone'.

Opening it up, what do I see find...... 

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And finally, in non-Smith book luck, I recently purchased one of Arthur Morrison's stories on the detective Martin Hewitt - 'The Red Triangle'. Beautiful cover, but on opening this cheap book I was thrilled to find Vincent Starrett's owner's signature inside!

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