Bob Addams, whose stock in trade was always animals in his newspaper series, produced the fantastical
Wild Animals You've Never Met (occasionally titled "..I've Never Met" as above) for the
Philadelphia Press from August 18 1907 to February 16 1908. In this series Addams exhibits an oddly prescient Seussian style. Could the 4 year old Ted Geisel have had access to the
Press or one of its syndicate clients over in Springfield Massachusetts? I dunno, but li'l Ted would have been at an ideal age to have something like this get stuck in his brain, don't you think?
Thanks to Cole Johnson for the sample!
What a fantastic find! Seems to be from the same school as J.P. Benson’s The Woozlebeasts and Gustave Verbeek’s Terrors of the Tiny Tads. Always interesting to see early Wolverton-esque proto-uglies. These are beautifully drawn and very funny.
ReplyDeleteI would guess the title is a reference to the book Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton.
Thanks, as always, for posting the good stuff, Allan!
Lovely. Why I keep this feed at the top of my iGoogle page. I like the playing around with the second column panels, and the variety of limerick-like rhyme schemes.
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