The original blurb, for Gelett Burgess’s 1907 book Are You A Bromide?, featuring Belinda Blurb
2 June 2020
Must of us know that a blurb is a short testimonial printed on a book jacket that touts and extols the book’s virtue, encouraging prospective readers to buy it. The word is a weird one, with comic overtones, and unusually it is one word for which we know the precise origin.
The year is 1907 and humorist Gelett Burgess’s new book, Are You a Bromide?, is selling well and Burgess is one of the honorees at the annual dinner of the American Bookseller’s Convention. It’s the custom for authors to bring presentation copies of their books to the convention, and Burgess has a special book jacket prepared for 500 copies of his book featuring the picture of a woman, lifted from a dental advertisement, named Miss Belinda Blurb, “in the act of blurbing.” The picture is captioned, “YES, this is a ‘BLURB’! All the Other Publishers commit them. Why Shouldn’t We?”
The blurb goes on to say:
Say! Ain’t this book a 90-H. P., six-cylinder Seller? If We do say it as shouldn’t, WE consider that this man Burgess has got Henry James locked into the coal-bin, telephoning for “Information”
WE expect to sell 350 copies of this great, grand book. It has gush and go to it, it has that Certain Something which makes you want to crawl through thirty miles of dense tropical jungle and bite somebody on the neck. No hero no heroine, nothing like that for OURS, but when you’ve READ this masterpiece, you’ll know what a BOOK is.
Seven years later, Burgess “defined” the word in his Burgess Unabridged:
Blurb, n. 1. A flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial. 2. Fulsome praise; a sound like a publisher.
Blurb, v. 1. To flatter from interested motives; to compliment oneself.
On the “jacket” of the “latest” fiction, we find the blurb; abounding in agile adjectives and adverbs, attesting that this book is the “sensation of the year;” the blurb tells of “thrills” and “heart-throbs,” of “vital importance” and “soul satisfying revelation.” The blurb speaks of the novel's “grip” and “excitement.” (See Alibosh.)
The circus advertiser started the blurb, but the book publisher discovered a more poignant charm than alliterative polysyllables. “It holds you from the first page—”
Now, you take this “Burgess Unabridged”— it's got a jump and a go to it—it's got a hang and a dash and a swing to it that pulls you right out of the chair, dazzles your eyes, and sets your hair to curling. It's an epoch-making, hearttickling, gorglorious tome of joy!
So, were not my publishers old-fashioned, would this my book be blurbed.
And Burgess defines alibosh as:
Al’i-bosh, n. A glaringly obvious falsehood; something not meant to be actually believed; a picturesque overstatement.
A circus poster is an alibosh; so is a seed catalogue, a woman’s age and an actress’s salary. (See Blurb.)
The word quickly caught on in the publishing industry, and the rest is history.
Sources:
Burgess, Gelett. Burgess Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Needed.” New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1914, 4, 7.
Mencken, H.L. The American Language, Supplement 1. New York: Knopf, 1945, 329n–30n.
“The Must-Read, Smash Hit Story of ‘Blurb.’” Merriam-Webster.com, n.d.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. blurb, n.
Image credit: Library of Congress.