Are You a Bromide? Or, The Sulphitic Theory. by BURGESS, Gelett - 1906: Expounded and Exemplified According to the Most Recent Researches Into the Psychology of Boredom. Including many well-known Bromidioms now in use. With decorations by the author.

New York: B. W. Huebsch,, 1906. Octavo. Original grey boards, paper label to front board printed in green and red. With the dust jacket. Text printed in black within ornamental borders printed in red, with head- and tailpieces in red. Neat repair to lightly browned spine, slight loss to spine ends, touch of wear to board edges, small mark to front board, top edge dust toned, a couple of gatherings ever-so-slightly sprung. A very good copy, the contents remarkably clean and bright, in the lightly soiled and rubbed jacket, chips to spine ends with 35 mm closed tear to foot of front joint, short closed tear to head of front panel, another to head of rear panel with related creasing. First edition, first printing. The dust jacket to this comedic work is famous for coining the term "blurb", and features a portrait of a"Miss Belinda Blurb in the act of blurbing". This portrait was chosen to parody the practice of, as Burgess's publisher B. W. Huebsch described it, having "the picture of a damsel - languishing, heroic, or coquettish - anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel" (Dwyer). Burgess was a San Francisco humorist who co-founded the comic magazine The Lark in 1895, the first issue of which featured his famous nonsense poem "The Purple Cow". The text of Are You a Bromide? was expanded and revised from Burgess's essay "The Sulphitic Theory", first published in the literary magazine The Smart Set in April 1906. This beautifully produced work is uncommon, with just one copy traced institutionally in the UK, held at the British Library.