Revelations

I came across a treasure this past Saturday at the Flea: a vintage book with an interesting cover that offered no clue of the adventure I was to find inside the pages. Remember Mad Libs? Well long before these were published in 1953, there was "Revelations of My Friends."

This parlour game was published in the form of a book in London in approximately 1912. Inside are pairs of pages originally bound together and perforated. On each first page of the pairs were a series of cut-outs matched with a direction to write something in the cut-out. Examples include colour, pet-name, profession, public character, and exclamation. The following page offered suggestions for the players:

There was also a space to draw your own portrait and sign your name. When you tore through the perforation, the second page revealed a story that was completed with the words that the reader wrote.

Seems like the some of the words chosen 100 years ago were quite tame as compared to today...

"Term of Abuse": cat, lump, you donkey, dog gone it, jack ass, silly, brute

"Term of Endearment": sukey, love, sweet-heart, sweetness, angel eyes

There are so many things I love about this book but I have to say that my favorite part has to be the self portraits.

In doing some research about this book, I came across this interview from NPR about another lucky finder of this book.