I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
New Rhyming Dictionary and Poets’ Handbook by Burges Johnson (revised edition)
New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Item #06666
Used for Three Decades - From Gigi and Camelot to His Final Years
Given by His Widow to Fellow Lyricist Leslie Bricusse
Alan Jay Lerner's Working Rhyming Dictionary - A Lyricist's Working Tool
Used for Three Decades in the Creation of Modern Musical Theater
[LERNER, Alan Jay]. JOHNSON, Burges. New Rhyming Dictionary and Poets’ Handbook (Revised Edition). New York: Harper & Row, [1957].
Octavo (8 1/8 x 5 1/2 inches; 206 x 140 mm.). x, [1–3], 4–464, [6, blank] pp. Publisher’s original black cloth over boards, spine lettered in light blue (binding well worn from extensive use). Housed in a full black morocco clamshell case.
From Gigi and Camelot to the unrealized songs that never left these pages - this was the book Lerner reached for when searching for the perfect word.
Alan Jay Lerner’s personal rhyming dictionary - used for nearly thirty years and densely annotated with working lyrics, rhymes, and song ideas - offering a rare window into the creative process behind Gigi and Camelot.
Given by his widow to fellow lyricist and two time Oscar winner, Leslie Bricusse. This is not merely a book, but a working companion in the making of modern musical theater.
Extensively and intensively annotated throughout by Alan Jay Lerner, with hundreds of manuscript additions in ink and pencil - song titles, rhyme schemes, lyrical fragments, word substitutions, and working notes filling margins, endpapers, and numerous text pages.
Accompanied by a signed note from Leslie Bricusse explaining the provenance: that this volume served as Lerner’s personal rhyming dictionary for nearly thirty years, from the period of Gigi and Camelot through to his death in 1986, and was presented to Bricusse by Lerner’s widow, Liz Robertson, in 1989 as he embarked on a musical project relating to George Gershwin.
The annotations themselves are vivid and revealing: pages are “festooned,” as Bricusse notes, with would-be rhymes, alternate phrasings, and embryonic lyrical ideas. Some entries suggest discarded lines; others read as sparks of songs never realized. Together they form a rare documentary record of the working methods of one of the greatest lyricists of the twentieth century.
Unlike fair copies or finished manuscripts, such working tools are exceptionally rare survivals - objects not intended for preservation, but for daily use. This volume shows precisely that use: worn, handled, and repeatedly returned to as a practical instrument of composition. It offers an intimate, almost forensic insight into Lerner’s craft - how he searched for sound, structure, and the exact word.
The association with Bricusse adds a second layer of importance, linking two major figures of musical theatre and film, each an Academy Award winner and master of lyric form. The transmission of the book - from Lerner to his widow, and then to Bricusse - creates a compelling and unbroken line of creative inheritance.
A unique and deeply evocative artifact of twentieth-century songwriting - less a book than a working companion in the creation of some of the most enduring lyrics of the modern stage.
Not a manuscript—but something rarer: the tool that made them possible.
Price: $18,500.00