The Stamp-Fiends' Raid

This is a humourous classic donated by the late philatelist George Townsend Turner, a Smithsonian curator. During his lifetime, George Turner had the largest private philatelic library in the world. The illustrations, called 'perpetrations,' are drawings rendered by the author and are extremely humorous. Mostly caricatures, the drawings depict philatelists battling various illnesses like the flu, and obstacles to collecting like spilled ink. But you don't need to be a stamp collector to enjoy the humor in this masterpiece. The prose is written in a Shakespearean format, with iambic pentameter, and other metrical lines of poetry. There are a series of short story poems, including "The Gray Fur Coat," and "At the Stamp Sale." Please help us preserve this literary treasure.