The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public / The Sentimental Song Book. / Centennial, 1876. (BUT ACTUALLY 1877)

Moore, Julia A.

Verlag: J.F. Ryder, Cleveland, Ohio, 1877

The third (and first Cleveland) edition. Original 4 X 5-3/4 inch booklet with original blue-gray front wrap (said wrap missing inch-square chip to top center) bound into boards which resemble a child's composition notebook, 4-3/8 X 6 inches with black cloth spine. 62 pp. including 2-pg. index, follows the first two (Grand Rapids) editions by C.M. Loomis. Rear wrap is missing; was not bound in. Julia Ann Moore, the "Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was America's challenger to Scotland's William McGonagall as the 19th Century's master of bad poetry in English -- a requirement for contention being, of course, that the poet couldn't be working tongue-in-cheek. Ogden Nash dedicated his first book to her, crediting to her hopeless verse his decision to become a "great bad poet" rather than a "bad good poet." In "Huckleberry Finn," Mark Twain based the character Emmeline Grangerford on Moore. Born Julia Ann Davis, she started writing poetry in her mid-teens, mostly in response to the deaths of children she knew, though (like McGonagall) any newspaper account of disaster could inspire her. At age 17, she married Frederick Moore, a farmer. Moore's first book of verse, "The Sentimental Song Book" was published in 1876 by Loomis in Grand Rapids, and quickly went into a second edition. A copy ended up in the hands of James Ryder of Cleveland, who republished it under the title "The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public," sending out review copies to newspapers across the country, with a cover letter filled with mocking "faint praise." Contemporary reviewers had fun with her awkwardly constructed efforts, contemporary humorist BIll Nye suggesting that her "poetic license should be revoked." The collection -- in effect the last gasp of the school of obituary poetry that had been broadly popular through the middle of the 19th Century -- became a curious best-seller. Moore staged a reading with song and orchestral accompaniment in 1877 at a Grand Rapids opera house. She managed to interpret jeering as criticism of the orchestra. Her second collection, "A Few Choice Words to the Public" appeared in 1878, "but found few buyers," Wikipedia reports. She gave a second public performance at the same venue in late 1878, by which time she'd deduced the praise directed at her was ironic. She began by admitting her poetry was "partly full of mistakes" and that "literary is a work very hard to do." Moore ended the show by telling the audience "You have come here and paid twenty-five cents to see a fool; I receive seventy-five dollars and see a whole house full of fools." Her husband reportedly then forbade her to publish more poetry, moving the family 100 miles north to Manton in 1882, where they made a success, he with an orchard and sawmill, she with a store. A year after her husband's death in 1914, Mrs. Moore, 68, published in pamphlet form her earlier newspaper serial "Sunshine and Shadow," a novella set during the American Revolution, which concludes when a farmer facing foreclosure is rescued by his wife's decision to publish her secret cache of fiction. The works of Julia Moore are now available almost exclusively in 20th Century (or later) reprints. 62 pp. including 2-pg. index. This original now reduced from $1,200. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 007756

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The Sweet Singer of Michigan Salutes the ...
Verlag: J.F. Ryder, Cleveland, Ohio
Erscheinungsdatum: 1877
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Good
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: No Jacket
Auflage: 3rd Edition