Hello everyone - I'm new to the list, so if I breach a sacred
tenet of (n?)etiquette, please hasten to let me know.
I have a question that is indirectly related to mid-c.20
detective fiction. In doing some research on the history of
autograph collecting, I found the following definition and
citation in the Random House Historical Dictionary of
American Slang:
-----------------------------------------------------------
-------- autograph hound n. a collector of autographs, esp.
an offensive person who clamor for the autographs of
celebrities. Now colloq.
1933 in Ruhm [ital]Detective[/ital] 72: He was an autograph
hound....He collected autographs. Autographs of all the
stars....He had five hundred of 'em.
-----------------------------------------------------------
-------- I'm curious about the citation. What "Detective"
magazine is it referring to? Who is this mysterious Ruhm
character? What does the number 72 refer to? The only info
I've been able to dig up on the web relating the name Ruhm to
detective fiction is Herbert Ruhm's anthology, "The
Hard-Boiled Detective: Stories from Black Mask Magazine,
1920-1951." If anyone on the list who has seen that volume
can speak to its relevance, or if anyone has an idea about
how I should approach this problem, I would greatly
appreciate any assistance you can provide.
On a related note, I am most interested in obtaining an
original copy of the magazine/whatever source originally held
the quotes listed in the citation. Is Ebay the best place to
find vintage detective fiction, or are there better sources -
online or otherwise?
Many thanks,
Nathaniel Adams University of Virginia
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Dec 2002 EST