[Bombaugh, Charles C.]. The Book of Blunders comprising Hibernicisms, Bulls that are not Irish and Typographic Errors; Selected and Edited by the Compiler of "Gleanings for the Curious" Philadelphia: Evans, Stoddart & Co., 1871. First Edition. [10793]
Green cloth with gilt borders, spine title, and device, frayed at the headcap, 6 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches, old white ink call number to spine. "Sturgis Library, Barnstable" bookplate with date of June 1, 1871; also red ink library stamp on the title page. 212 clean pages, pages bordered in red, tight. Good. Hardcover.
[The book's] "aim is simply to afford the occasional reader a half hour's amusement or mental relaxation, and for this purpose we have gathered together and arranged some of the most laughable of the blunders which are scattered abroad in a fugitive form, or are buried in books amid a mass of heavier material. The selections are limited to the different kinds of verbal blunders which provoke laughter by their drollery or their absurdity, or those forms of practical blundering which, at the worst, hurt none but those concerned with the commission." - Preface.
Charles Carroll Bombaugh (1828-1906), b. Harrisburg, PA; d. Baltimore, MD. Bombaugh was a graduate of Harvard (1850) and of the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia (1853). He served for a year as a surgeon in the Union Army before resigning due to poor health. After the War he became a medical examiner for life insurance companies and was editor of The Baltimore Underwriter for over 30 years.
Bombaugh was vice president of the American Academy of Science, 1882-1894.
He wrote several books on odd topics, including Gleanings for the Curious, The Book of Blunders, First Things, Literature of Kissing, and Stratagems and Conspiracies to Defraud Insurance Companies.
