The Glass Harmonica, written and illustrated by Barbara Ninde Byfield and published in 1967, is a collection of “revelations of the mystical order of things.” It was later published under the name The Book of the Weird because I am not sure the actual glass harmonica is ever once mentioned in the text.

This is a book written in the mode of an encyclopedic reference book, a form I adored as a kid (I still have tons of these – The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Take Warning: A Book of Superstitions, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, and on and on and on). I found this one in high school, after reading a mention of it in T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events at Poroth Farm” (in my estimation, perhaps the best horror story of the latter half of the 20th century, and not just because it is set in New Jersey; you should check it out).

The Glass Harmonica is a little bit whimsical, a little bit irreverent, a little bit sly and is a guide to all the things you might find in a fantasy story or folktale. It is of particular interest because it came out during the fantasy boom of the late 1960s and reflects the overarching themes of the period. Its a breezy, lighthearted take on fantasy, free of the preconceptions that would begin to harden in the 70s (thanks, in no small part, to D&D).

It is packed with lots of fine details. My favorite, I think, is a two-page spread illustrating all sorts of landscape features: moor, mead, thicket, gorge, quagmire and more.

The art is quite interesting, I think. A bit rough, a lot unpretentious. It is maybe the best evidence that the sort of art made famous by early D&D existed long before RPGs.