Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things

New York/London: Harper & Brothers. Very Good in Fair dj. 1919. 1st Edition (I-T). Hardcover. [moderate wear to bottom edge and top of spine, gilt spine lettering largely rubbed away (although front cover lettering is still strong); jacket heavily soiled, large chip at top right corner of rear panel, small chip at upper left corner of front panel, tiny surface-peeled scar on front panel, a bit of paper loss at all corners]. (cartoon drawings) Classic Jewish dialect humor, featuring the archetypal (some would say stereotypical) perpetually-bickering garment-trade business partners. In this episodic novel, the pair decide to make a trip to Paris to check out the fashion scene, and coincidentally find themselves there at the same time as President Woodrow Wilson, who's attending the Peace Conference at Versailles; this leads to extensive commentary (to each other and to anyone else in earshot) on the Conference itself, and other political topics of the day. The P&P stories began appearing in The Saturday Evening Post in 1909, and proved so popular that the characters soon migrated to other media: the first stage adaptation was produced in 1913, with Barney Bernard and Alexander Carr essaying the roles, then reprising them in several additional plays. Bernard also appeared as Potash in the first film adaptation (for First National in 1923), but died in 1924 and was replaced by George Sidney for two later films. (Carr played Morris Perlmutter in all three films.) The author claimed to have based his material on his early-life experience as a lawyer, during which he observed on a daily basis the conflicts arising from the legal problems faced by traders in goods, many of them Jewish, as was he himself. .