Nouvelle orléans

1915 · WRCAM55407 — New Orleans 1915. 96pp. printed throughout in black. 12mo. Original pale blue wrappers printed in red. Spine sunned minor edge wear. Internally clean. Very good plus. The last edition of the series of guides to the bawdy houses and prostitutes of New Orleans issued between 1900 and 1915 and known collectively as the "Blue Books" of Storyville. Heartman identifies this is as the twelfth or thirteenth edition. Pamela Arceneaux in GUIDEBOOKS TO SIN condenses Heartman's last two editions into the same print run having compared Heartman's two editions and found them identical. Arceneaux further believes that this edition could have been printed as early as 1913 based on intertextual clues found during her research cross-referenced with contemporary New Orleans city directories. <br> <br> Further the textblock of this copy is printed entirely in black unlike the normal red-and-black printing of most other copies of this edition. Arceneaux explains on p.105 of GUIDEBOOKS TO SIN: <br> <br> "There appears to have been a printing of this edition in which all of the text and design elements of the interior pages are printed only in black ink with none of the rubrication seen in THNOC's The Historic New Orleans Collection's seven identical copies. I have examined a copy of this item that is in private hands and its size the cover printing and the quality of the paper are exactly the same as THNOC's seven. There is one other exception - three staples are used to bind the text block rather than the usual two seen in most issues. The printing on the interior pages the overall wear and the accumulation of rust around the staples leads me to believe that even lacking the red-ink highlights of the others this one is also of the Storyville period." <br> <br> The only way in which the present copy differs from the above description is in the number of staples - the present copy has two as seen in the red-ink issue. Arceneaux does not postulate about the differences in this printing of the Blue Book from the red-ink version but we might propose that the all- black-ink version of the Blue Book was perhaps a trial printing executed at the beginning of the period of this edition or likely one of the very latest productions of this edition once the printer had exhausted the red ink and there was still demand for the guidebook. <br> <br> The red-light district of New Orleans operated in a very public way until the U.S. government suppressed it at the time of the American entrance into the First World War. This guide lists women by address followed by advertisements for brothels; all interspersed with advertisements for liquor and cigars. Included are lists of burlesque houses names of landladies and names of prominent women in the trade. The prostitutes are often identified by race most commonly white black and octoroon. <br> <br> The earliest such guide appeared about 1896 and they were produced almost annually from 1900 to 1915. During this period all of the guides issued under the title BLUE BOOK were the product of Billy Struve allegedly from the second floor of Lulu White's saloon at the corner of Basin Street and Bienville though that story is likely apocryphal. More likely Struve assembled the BLUE BOOKS from his management offices at Anderson's a saloon owned by the "Mayor of Storyville" Tom Anderson located at the corner of Basin and Iberville where according to the city directories he also resided for most of the Storyville years. An advertisement for Tom Anderson's New Cabaret and Restaurant is found on the rear wrapper of this edition. The two photographs include the facade of Emma Johnson's famous "Studio" and a portrait of the Oriental Danseuse Rita Walker. <br> <br> Owing to their content and heavy use all BLUE BOOK guides are extremely rare. A nice example of a rarely-encountered variant of the last Storyville BLUE BOOK. HEARTMAN BLUE BOOKS XII/XIII. ARCENEAUX GUIDEBOOKS TO SIN 10. unknown books