Classic American Graffiti: Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America, 1977, SC, VG.

Walker Read, Allen, and Reinhold Aman. Wisconsin, Maledicta Press, 1977. 

English, Very Good, Softcover, 8vo, 8 1/2" x 5 1/4", 83 pp.

ISBN: 0916500063

Brown perfect-bound wraps, white lettering to front and spine, minor shelf wear to front, back, and edges, some sunning to spine, otherwise clean, tightly bound, and unmarked throughout. [4] 83 + 7 pp., no images, Foreword and text by Allen Walker Read, Preface, Introduction, section I "The Nature of Obscenity," section II "Folk Epigraphy," section III "Biographical Note," Glossary of Stigmatized Words, Afterword by Reinhold Aman. From Read's Foreword: "I am happy that the following study, first printed forty-two years ago, can now be given a wider circulation. This was a pioneering work at that time, I believe, and even now can serve as a record of the 'bad words' then current and the fashions in graffiti."  From the Preface: "Judged merely as reading matter, the following work...is abominably, incredibly obscene, and the compiler begs that anyone will lay this book down who is not prepared to look at all social phenomena with the dispassionate eye of the anthropologist and the student of abnormal psychology. I believe that no emanation of the human spirit is too vile or too despicable to come under the record and analysis of the scientist." Text originally privately printed in Paris in 1935.