PHILO GUBB: Correspondence School Detective

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918. Very good.. First edition in book form of these popular comedic stories, featuring a simple midwestern man who learns detective work via a correspondence school course advertising: "We can make you the equal of Sherlock Holmes in twelve lessons." Mr. Gubb dutifully practices the lessons of his correspondence school (lesson #4: snooping) in the opening story about his arrest of another man who is studying how to be a con man from a different correspondence school. Mr. Gubb then purchases "eighteen complete disguises from the Supply Department" of the correspondence school and sets about his career as "the foremost deteckative of Riverbank, Iowa," an unintelligent but diligent practitioner among the detective stories craze. These stories first appeared individually in REDBOOK magazine, 1913-1915, enjoying a large readership. The pictorial cloth design on the front board references Holmes iconography - hat, pipe, and robe - but only hinting at the developing image of Holmes in a deerstalker with a calabash pipe that we consider standard today. One of the great Holmes parodies. 7.25'' x 5''. Original orange pictorial cloth stamped in black with design of Holmes-like detective talking to a well-dressed woman, with a microscope and bookcase in the background. Illustrated with black-and-white frontispiece and 19 full-page black-and-white plates. viii, 353, [1] pages. Faint ink inscription on front free endpaper. Moderate soil to cloth, with a few markings and some rubbing. Touch of foxing to edges, else text block very clean.