A Bibliographic Lecture by Stephen Fowler

EMANUEL HALDEMAN-JULIUS AND THE "GIRARD SCHOOL":
The radicals, eccentrics, and misfits behind America's most prodigious (and least-remembered) mail-order publishing empire.

WHEN: Wednesday, October 15, at 6:30 pm
WHERE: Power Plant Reading Room, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
ADMISSION: Free

Attention bibliophile obscurists: next week, Monkey's Paw proprietor Stephen Fowler will present a 30-minute show 'n' tell on the subject of the once-famous Little Blue Books (and other pamphlets) published by the Haldeman-Julius Company of Girard, Kansas.

These uniform staplebound oddities -- which visitors to the Monkey's Paw will likely have noticed, pinned in tidy rows on the shop's wall displays -- constituted some of the most widely-disseminated printed culture of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. The pamphlets' subject matter ranged from the mundane to the bizarre, and their authors were equally colourful and diverse. Fowler, who is a devoted scholar, collector, and dealer of Haldeman-Julius material, will share his considerable enthusiasm for the subject, and display a variety of uncommon and revealing Haldeman-Julius publications from his rarely-seen private collection.

[Please note: Fowler's talk is but one facet of a collaborative interdisciplinary project, "Born Out of Pleasure...", organized at the Power Plant by artist Harrell Fletcher. Each Wednesday through October, the Power Plant will host a different lecture by one of Fletcher's subjects; for more information, visit http://cakeworthy.blogspot.com... , or contact jdavies [at] harbourfrontcentre [dot] com.]