Very Fragile with care being taken to touch, let alone turn the pages. This copy was published in 1951 by Angus and Robertson, 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, but printed in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd. London and Southampton.
The foreword is as follows; The sixty eight stories of this collection were chosen from those appearing in the New Yorker during the first fifteen and a half years of publication. February 1925, to September, 1940. In making the selection it was often difficult to decide where fiction began and fact left off. For the purpose of this anthology, reminiscence of the Clarence Day "Father" stories, the The Thurber's "My Life and Hard Times," Joseph Mitchell's Black Ankle Country Stories, of Bemelmans, Mencken, and Ruth McKenney together with the personal sorrows of day-by-day life as reported by many other writers. Parable, prophecy, fable, fantasy, satire, burlesque, parody, nonsense tales, and, with a few exceptions, stories from series were also omitted. The choice will undoubtedly not wholly please either the writers, the public, or the individual editors of the New Yorker, all of whom will complain that favourites are missing. Occasionally a much reprinted story was dropped in favour of one less known by the same author, and some of first rate stories were not used because of duplication of theme or because, in the autumn of 1940, they seemed dated.