Trivia (The Roger Mifflin Collection)

"If your mind needs phosphorus, try 'Trivia, ' by Logan Pearsall Smith. - Roger Mifflin, proprietor of The Haunted Bookshop"It would be extravagant to claim that Pearsall Smith's Trivia, the remarkable little book from which these miniature essays are extracted, is well known: it is too daintily, fragile and absurd and sophisticated to appeal to a very large public. But it has a cohort of its own devotees and fanatics, and since its publication in 1917 it has become a sort of password in a secret brotherhood," wrote Christopher Morley in his book Modern Essays about this hard-to-categorize collection of aphorisms that, through its title, introduced a word into the English language. Smith's aphorisms are anything but trivial; alternately whimsical and insightful and heartbreaking, they are popcorn-sized glimpses into the human condition.The third in a new collection of classic books inspired by Roger Mifflin, owner of Morley's Haunted Bookshop, Trivia is an early 20th century gem.