Are You a Bromide? Or, The Sulphitic Theory. Expounded and Exemplified According to the Most Recent Researches Into the Psychology of Boredom. Including many well-known Bromidioms now in use. With decorations by the author.

First edition of the satirical work which coined the word "blurb" on its dust jacket. Featuring a portrait of "Miss Belinda Blurb in the act of blurbing", the jacket parodies the practice, as Burgess's publisher B. W. Huebsch describes it, of having "the picture of a damsel - languishing, heroic, or coquettish - anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel". Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) was a San Francisco humorist who co-founded the iconoclastic magazine The Lark in 1895, which featured in its first issue his famous nonsense poem "The Purple Cow". The text of this work was expanded and revised from Burgess's essay "The Sulphitic Theory", first published in the literary magazine Smart Set in April 1906. Octavo. Text printed in black within ornamental borders in red, head- and tailpieces in red. Original grey boards, paper label to front cover printed in green and red. With dust jacket. Lightly worn at extremities with small loss to spine ends, rear joint neatly repaired, a couple of light marks to boards, first gathering slightly proud; dust jacket lightly soiled and worn, a couple of splits to spine and extremities, flaps without price as issued: a very good copy in very good dust jacket.…