Levison, William H. BLACK DIAMONDS, OR, HUMOR, SATIRE, AND SENTIMENT, TREATED SCIENTIFICALLY BY PROFESSOR JULIUS CAESAR HANNIBAL IN A SERIES OF BURLESQUE LECTURES, DARKLY COLORED. New York Picayune, NY, 1857. 8vo., original cloth, 364pp. Levison was humorist who wrote under a pseudonym. He expressed his cynical views about society and its values in the guise of lectures, in dialect, by a black "professor." At least one critic believes that Levison's very popular writings were the inspiration for statements of the crazed cabin boy, Pip in "Moby Dick." (see Reynolds, "Beneath the American Renaissance - The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville," Oxford Univ. Press, 1989) A loosened signature, browning to pages, still Very Good.
