Non Series #114- Potash & Perlmutter with author’s inscription

This book was published by the Henry Altemus Company in 1910. It was first published in the New York Post in 1909.

1910

Title page

Author Inscription

The author, Montague Glass (1877-1934), was an English-born playwright who moved to the United States in 1890. Although educated as a lawyer, he made his living as a writer. His plays were comedies about Jewish business partners. This book, Potash and Perlmutter, became a successful play produced in 1913 (three years after the Altemus book was published). Another half dozen or so plays were written in collaboration with other authors in the teens and 1920’s.

Potash and Perlmutter was also made into a Samuel Goldwyn silent movie produced in 1923. Two sequels were produced, one in 1924- In Hollywood with Potash and Perlmutter and the third one in 1926 – Partners Again.

This book was illustrated by Henry Patrick Raleigh (1880-1944). Raleigh did illustrations for a number of magazines: Vanity Fair, Saturday Evening Post and Colliers to name a few. He mainly drew pictures of “aristocratic socialites” including the pictures for this book. For more information about Raleigh see http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2009/12/henry-patrick-raleigh-1880-1944.html.

Altemus did not publish any other works of Montague Glass.

Glass inscribed this book to Benjamin Lambord (1879-1915). Lambord who was an American composer was a friend of Glass. An article in the San Francisco Examiner indicates that the Glass and his wife shared a cottage in Switzerland with Lambord in 1911.

Shown above is a picture of the Altemus book from 1910, the book’s title page and an author’s inscription.

Montague Glass

Henry Patrick Raleigh

Sample Raleigh illustration from Potash and Perlmutter