The Lanthorn Book: Being a Small Collection of Tales and Verses Read at The Sign o' the Lanthorn 126 William Street New York

New York: Sign o' the Lanthorn, 1898. Collection of short stories & poems by members of a New York literary club, of whom the best-remembered are the young Stephen Crane and his some-time publisher, Irving Bacheller. The group met regularly to hear each other's writings, of which, according to Wertheim's Stephen Crane Encyclopedia (quoting Bacheller), "Only negative criticism was permitted, and "the highest tribute that a story could receive was complete silence."" This book is apparently the club's only publication, and about half of it is Crane's short story 'The Wise Men', of a foot race in Mexico, also published that year in his collection 'The Open Boat'; (BAL II, p. 337). Number 61 of the edition of 125, this SIGNED by Crane after his contribution, as are five of the other six pieces included, all except that of Hawkins, purporting to reproduce a poem by a six-year-old (with 'klecksograph' illustrations reminiscent of Rorschach blots, no doubt inspired by the book Gobolinks, published in 1896). Stallman A19; he notes an unsubstantiated story that Crane signed fewer than a dozen copies, but it is clear that more, though not all, were signed. The other contributors who have signed were Brooklyn editor John Langdon Heaton, newsman (and force behind the club) Irving Bacheller, journalist & diplomat Post Wheeler, Detroit (later New York) journalist & satirist Charles B. Lewis (as "M. Quad"), and Charles Kelsey Gaines. Hardcover in quarter-leather, as pictured, split leather or suede over green cloth boards. Book shows light wear, corners bumped, minor loss to base of spine; evidence of book-plate removal from inside front cover, leaves opposite lightly cockled; ink gift note (from Brooklyn Daily Eagle publisher H. F. Gunnison to his [second] wife Effie), partly altered, opposite the Contents page, the process of alteration lightly staining the adjacent pages, a few other minor stains & smudges within. Text clean; unpaginated, but about 51 text pages, a few half-tone illustrations, one real photo of a derelict boat accompanying Heaton's poem. . First Edition. Quarter Leather. Good/No Jacket. Illus. by G. Y. Kauffman, F. H. King. Quarto.