Note: This article has been rendered even more surreal by the strange process of drift that occasionally affects images from Google Books. Some day Dr. Boli may attempt to correct the problem. Evidently that day is not today.

What is surrealism? “Surrealist works,” says the omniscient Wikipedia, “feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.” By this standard, the most perfectly surrealist works of literature are the type samples issued by the great type foundries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dr. Boli will make no further argument for this proposition, because argument is superfluous where demonstration carries conviction, These samples are all drawn from a single catalog of the Economical Printing Company of New York, issued in 1896: