Dennison's Bogie Book

Dennison's Bogie Book (1920)

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This guide to Halloween and Thanksgiving festivities was mainly intended to drive sales at Dennison's stores but has nice illustrations.  Some other Dennison's material is available including How to Make Paper Costumes and Dennison's Gala Book.

Tales of Terror; or, The Mysteries of Magic

Henry St. Clair - Tales of Terror; or, The Mysteries of Magic (1833)

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Supernatural stories supposedly "translated from the Chinese, Turkish, and German".  Titles include "The Mysterious Bell", "The Gored Huntsman", "The Cavern of Death" and "The Magic Dice, An Awful Narrative".  There's no indication that this reprints an 1833 book - it was reissued in 1856 as Evening Tales for the Winter.

Can't find anything about the author but he's probably the same Henry St. Clair who in 1840 compiled The United States Criminal Calendar, or An Awful Warning to the Youth of America: Being an Account of the Most Horrid Murders, Piraces, Highway Robberies, &c (available at The HathiTrust).  There might be some connection to the American pulp horror writer Henry St. Clair Whitehead (1882-1932) but that speculation is based purely on the name.

Shadowings

Lafcadio Hearn - Shadowings (1900)

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Not a discovery, not an oddity, but appropriate for Halloween (more or less).  It's something of a grab bag with the first section comprised of translated ghost and supernatural stories, including "The Reconciliation" that was filmed as Kwaidan.  There's a brief middle with essays on cicadas, Japanese women's names and old songs before closing with a section of "Fantasies" that seem to be basically prose poems of Hearn's own composition.

The Burlesque Napoleon

Philip Walsingham Sergeant - The Burlesque Napoleon (1905)

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From the title I expected a comic or parody history of Napoleon but this turns out to be a serious biography of his younger brother Jerome.  The introduction notes that while "the study of a libertine's career could never in itself be particularly edifying" Jerome "had a career of wonderful variety and interest".  This included being King of Westphalia, Prince of Montfort, President of the Second Republic, Marshal of France and President of the Senate.  A very active personal life include three wives, five children (one illegitimate) in addition to being a "monumental rake".

Still, Sergeant apologizes for "confining himself nearly to the frivolous side of Westphalian history" since the more serious is part of the elder Napoleon's history.  Sergeant (1872-1952) wrote other biographies of a variety of subjects - Empress Josephine, Anne Boleyn, China's empress dowager, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra.  Given those subjects maybe it's no surprise that a 1929 book was called Dominant Women.  He also wrote several books on chess.

Jack Pots

Eugene Edwards - Jack Pots: Stories of the Great American Game (1900)

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I don't like poker but that's clearly a minority opinion so for everybody else here's a collection of stories about the game.  Des Wilson, author of Ghosts at the Table, says he can't tell if the stories are true or fictional but in either case they aspire to the condition of short story.  Herbert Asbury referenced the book in Sucker's Progress.  Edwards had two later books of poker stories, A Million Dollar Jackpot and Tom Custer's Luck (both 1901), though they were possibly reprints from this volume.  I can't find anything about the author.

The Ethics of Diet

Howard Williams - The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating (1883)

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Check the subtitle for the book's real purpose - centuries of people arguing for vegetarianism or at least close enough to be enlisted to that cause.  Starts with Hesiod and runs to Schopenhauer and includes names you wouldn't have expected such as Ovid, Mandeville, Pope, Voltaire.  This scholarship is what's most interesting, for me anyway.  The entry on Seneca, for instance, begins with a discussion of his health and character, lists his works, offers a brief appraisal, and includes lots of quotes from both Seneca and other sources.  The book is certainly not a tossed-together hash of ill understood sources.  Tolstoy had it translated into Russian and contributed an introduction.

While researching I discovered this had been reprinted by the University of Illinois Press in 2003.  Its introduction by Carol J. Adams covers the background far more thoroughly than anything I'd ever do and can be read in its entirety on Google Books.

Kitchener's Army and the Territorial Forces

Edgar Wallace - Kitchener's Army and the Territorial Forces (1915)

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Edgar Wallace is best remembered today for his crime novels and for the German krimi films they inspired, but he was also an active journalist.  He wrote extensively for the London Mail with the dubious distinction of being the first reporter fired from it due to numerous libel actions his writing inspired.  He reported on the atrocities in the Congo before eventually becoming a horse racing writer, somehow finding time to be one of the most prolific writers ever (one count is 175 novels and 60 plays).

This book is about the creation of the New Army, or Kitchener's Army as it's also called, a large mobilization of British troops after the start of the first world war.  The bulk of the book describes training and camp life which is sometimes interesting reading but it's really the numerous photos that really make it worth paging through.  You might think I've been very selective in choosing the more peculiar ones, even that Monty Python-ish "dance", but they're largely like that.