Monday, April 05, 2010
Mercury Publications' forgotten humor magazine
I remember this digest-size magazine, The Book of Wit & Humor, published by Mercury in 1953. Below is the announcement as it appeared in the December 1952 issue of Mercury's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. But here's the curiosity: It has vanished so completely that there are no more than two or three brief mentions of The Book of Wit & Humor on the entire Internet.
Does anyone own a copy? If so, it would be nice to see a cover scan. I believe there was only a single issue in 1953. But why didn't they title it The Magazine of Wit & Humor? Thus, it could have been promoted as a companion to F&SF.
Louis Untermeyer was the editor, and the managing editor was Charles Angoff, who earlier collaborated with Lawrence Spivak on the The American Mercury Reader (1944). The cover stock and format were identical to F&SF and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. As I recall, it had a reprint of Ring Lardner's "Alibi Ike". A cartoon (by Saul Steinberg, I think) showed a woman entering a subway kiosk with the caption: "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi."
,+F%26SF_Page_127.jpg)
I remember this digest-size magazine, The Book of Wit & Humor, published by Mercury in 1953. Below is the announcement as it appeared in the December 1952 issue of Mercury's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. But here's the curiosity: It has vanished so completely that there are no more than two or three brief mentions of The Book of Wit & Humor on the entire Internet.
Does anyone own a copy? If so, it would be nice to see a cover scan. I believe there was only a single issue in 1953. But why didn't they title it The Magazine of Wit & Humor? Thus, it could have been promoted as a companion to F&SF.
Louis Untermeyer was the editor, and the managing editor was Charles Angoff, who earlier collaborated with Lawrence Spivak on the The American Mercury Reader (1944). The cover stock and format were identical to F&SF and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. As I recall, it had a reprint of Ring Lardner's "Alibi Ike". A cartoon (by Saul Steinberg, I think) showed a woman entering a subway kiosk with the caption: "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi."
,+F%26SF_Page_127.jpg)
Labels: humor, the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, wit
¶ 1:17 PM
