You Likee Me? Washee Washee [wrapper cover] Washee-Washee: Laundry Lists for a Year...With Wise Saws and Modern Instances. Approximately 62 unnumbered pp., apparently complete, 11x5", original color pictorial covers, in the shape of a Chinese laundryman, holding a fan, with a string tie connected to a period Chinese coin. Printed on fragile red paper.
Each page has what is literally a laundry list, with separate sections of articles of clothing for men and women and household linen, and quotations from Emerson, Holmes, Horace Mann, et al. An elaborate gimmick imprint by the publishers of Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series, then in its fifth year.
The publishers advertised Baum’s works (the “Marvelous Land of Oz” appeared that year) together with this "novelty…unique, original, clever and useful. A 'shape-book' - cut out with a die on the outline of a Chinaman - containing weekly laundry lists for a year and scores of maxims, quips and aphorisms. Printed on fire-cracker-red paper…Silk cord hangers strung with genuine Chinese coins." (This copy actually has a center-cut coin attached by a string). One Reilly & Britton ad in Publisher’s Weekly designed in the form of an “Osmapolitan” newspaper, had a “headline” reading “Yellow Peril / Washee Washee / Oz Endangered by Invasion of Heathen Chinee!” reporting that “the local government at first feared that the Yellow Peril was about to engulf Mars and extend to Oz and Jupiter, but late advices dispel all apprehension...” Reilly & Britton also issued the book with brown leather covers and the coin attached by a leather tie; several years ago, we sold a copy in this format, but with several pages torn out. An obvious rarity given the razor thin paper on which the lists were printed; WorldCat locates only one copy, at the Lilly Library,