New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1935
8vo, unpaginated, single page advertisement bound in at rear. Original mauve boards, lettered and illustrated in silver to front board. Illustrated green dust jacket. Bookplate to front pastedown. A fine copy in a better than very good dust jacket, small nick to foot of spine and just a little wear to corners and top edge.
First edition, SIGNED BY BOTH EDITORS AND ILLUSTRATOR TO FRONT FREE ENDPAPER. Frank Ronan Rademaker's copy, with his bookplate to front pastedown and pencilled ownership signature ('Frank') to front free endpaper.
'It was one of those ideas....but even the next morning it sounded feasible. Ask several of the literati to concoct original holiday drinks! Nome these concoctions after their books. Entitle the entire batch SO RED THE NOSE with apologies to Stark Young.' (Editors' preface.)
Concoction No. 1 gets the book off to a roaring start: 'Ernest Hemingway's DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON Cocktail. Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink 3 to 5 of these slowly. [...] (EDITOR'S NOTE: After six of these cocktails The Sun Also Rises.)'
Among the other contributors to the book are Alexander Woollcott, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rockwell Kent, Harriet Monroe and Theodore Dreiser.As well as 'jigger', measurements used in the recipes include 'ounce', 'pint', 'slather', 'bottle', 'a tin dipperful', 'pitcher' and 'dollop'. The writer H.L. Davis warns that his offering is not recommended for 'children, expectant mothers and people who cry easily.'
Post-Prohibition and pre-health and safety, this copy is very well preserved (unlike its users) and triply signed.