This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
BRICKTOP (Pseud. G.G. Small). The Life of Hungry Joe. King of the Bunco Men. New York: Frank Tousey, 1885. Original pictorial wraps, the upper bearing a wood engraved bust portrait of Joe. Illustrated. 41, [7], including adverts. 8vo. Disbound. Chipped and fragile, but complete. Pages deacidified; housed in an archival folder. Rare. “Hungry Joe” was the street name of Joe Lewis, who, aside from being a notorious criminal, is given credit in this book as the author of the phrase often attributed to P.T. Barnum: “It was always a saying with Joe that there was a sucker born every minute, and all through his business career he acted on that basis, and generally found a good crop of them.” Herbert Asbury, writing in his seminal Sucker’s Progress (New York, 1938), reported: “…Oscar Wilde, in the United States on a lecture tour, was caught for several thousand dollars by Hungry Joe Lewis, a cadaverous crook who always had a well-filled wallet but never, apparently, enough to eat.” Before being sent to prison in 1888, Joe was considered the greatest sharper of his day. “…Thomas Byrnes of the New York police [claimed that Lewis] had trimmed more “flats” than any five of his contemporaries.” We have been able to locate only one other example of this work, held institutionally.