Blue Book
[New Orleans]: 1915.
[ca. 1915]. [96] pp. The last edition of the famed "Blue Books," a series of directories to houses of prostitution in New Orleans's red-light district, Storyville. Bound in publisher's original pale blue wraps printed in red, bound with three staples and text printed only in black. As bibliographer Pamela Arceneaux explains in Guidebooks to Sin, "There appears to have been a printing of this edition in which all of the text and design elements of the interior pages are printed only in black ink, with none of the rubrication seen in THNOC's [The Historic New Orleans Collection's] seven identical copies. I have examined a copy of this item that is in private hands, and its size, the cover printing, and the quality of the paper are exactly the same as THNOC's seven. There is one other exception - three staples are used to bind the text block rather than the usual two seen in most issues. The printing on the interior pages, the overall wear, and the accumulation of rust around the staples leads me to believe that, even lacking the red-ink highlights of the others, this one is also of the Storyville period." Very Good with some toning and light wear to wraps.
Colloquially named for the city alderman Sidney Story (much to his chagrin) who sponsored legislation to confine city-sanctioned prostitution to a 38-block area just north of the French Quarter, the red-light district of Storyville lasted form 1897-1917. During that time, guide books such as these were often available in barbershops and saloons. This lists burlesque houses, prostitutes by race (such as white, black, octoroon) and landladies, interspersed with ads for cigars and liquor, and contains a notice that this guide must not be mailed, as the distribution of suggestive material by the United States Postal Service was banned.
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