Description

Highland Press, Culver City, California, Published 1949. Hardcover, xi, 100 pp; 24 cm; printed by Murray & Gee, Inc., Culver City. In Acceptable+ condition, no dust jacket. Bright red cloth boards stamped in black on the front (title and author within a ruled box) and on the spine; the cloth shows chipping, tearing, and some fraying along the spine and top edge, with mild shelf wear and light soiling overall. Spine just beginning to crack along the front gutter, but the binding remains tight. The interior is much better preserved than the cloth: pages toned with age but otherwise clean and unmarked, with no foxing. Signed and inscribed by the author on the front pastedown, dated March 1949 to a named recipient, with the quoted aphorism "He is truly great that is little in himself" above her ink signature; the front free endpaper carries a transcribed eight-line sentimental verse opening "Count your garden by the flowers."Schiffman's privately printed character study of her Los Angeles neighborhood, organized as roughly forty short prose vignettes (one to two pages each) of figures she observed there, opened by her own meditative verse and closed with "A Prayer" of her composition. Subtitled "A Study on Sociological Problems in Fictional Form," the book is an unusual mid-century example of vernacular sociology written by an amateur observer who frames her neighbors as a microcosm of "all mankind." The cast, drawn with the period descriptors of 1949, includes Jewish residents, immigrant tradespeople, Black, Chinese, and Roma neighbors, the elderly and disabled, interracial families, and ordinary working women and men. Issued by the Highland Press imprint in Culver City and printed locally by Murray & Gee, Inc.; no other printing is recorded in WorldCat.Contents: My Manuscript; I Am the Poet; You; Dedication; Foreword; Explanation; Grisha; Anna; Mrs. Gershon; The Rebitzen; Steve; John Duncan; Mr. Zusloff; The Paralytic's Wife; The Pickle Lady; Snow White; The Kurtz Family; The Kemals; David Dooley and His Family; Sol Spencer; Marvin Maxwell; The Prince of Wales; The Yellow Cat; The Chinaman; Wolfgang, the Baker; The Candy Man; The Shoemaker; The Meat Man; The Quints; A Customer; The Gypsies; Vera; The Legless Man; Mrs. Olen, the Priestess; The Chinese Negro; The Brown Boy; Mrs. Chester and Her Son; A Midnight Session; A Hotel; Mrs. Andrews; The Doctor; The Beauty Lady and Her Man; A Brown Mother and Her White Child; Lizzy, the Drunk; The Parsons; Willie Worm; A Prayer.