Doubleday, 1953. First Edition. Jacket painting by Charles Addams.
“H. Allen Smith has written the first comprehensive book about the ancient & honorable pastime of practical jokery & about the people, great & small, who have practiced it. The imaginative, the complicated, the subtle, the funny – the very, very funny – comprise its subject matter, while the crude “induced pratfall or disappearing chair” school of pranksters is given short shrift.”
