* * * C H I L D R E N' S B O O K S * 2 0 2 4 B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S 1 "A HALLOWEEN VERSION OF NORMAN ROCKWELL AND GRANT WOOD": HOMEBODIES, INSCRIBED BY CHARLES ADDAMS WITH AN ORIGINAL DRAWING 1. ADDAMS, Charles. Homebodies. New York, 1954. Tall slim octavo, original half pink cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. $3500 First edition, second printing, of Addams’ fourth collection of cartoons, inscribed to one of his editors, “For Bill Gebert, with best regards and appreciation for the headaches of production in making these collections Chas Addams, New York, 1954.” Beneath the inscription is an original drawing of Wednesday Addams and a two-headed cat. Gebert was an editor at The New Yorker. Novelist Wilfrid Sheed remembers Addams as “a tall, laconic man, with a head he might have drawn himself and a voice straight out of Casket and Sunnyside, the mortician’s manual.” “Addams specialized in a bizarre brand of comedy founded on the inexplicable in nature and the antisocial in humanity… Although he sold cartoons to many magazines during the 1930s and 1940s, Addams is most closely associated with The New Yorker, where his macabre sense of humor became a fixture. That magazine bought its first Addams cartoon in 1935” (ANB). Addams’ prototypical American family, described by Sheed as “an American classic, a Halloween version of Norman Rockwell and Grant Wood,” inspired a hit television series and two movies. Book fine. Light soiling and edgewear and chipping to spine ends of bright, very good dust jacket.
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