Nafelcon. Official Organ of the National Fellowship Club. Numbers 1 to 24, Volumes I and II, extending from October, 1925, to September, 1927.
Washington, D. C.: Jean Monk, 1925-1927. 13-3/4 x 9 inches. Unpaginated issues, approx. 300pp total. Includes a total of 27 complete issues: Vol. 1, Nos. 1-12 (including two different issues of No. 10); Vol. 2, Nos. 1-12; and Vol. 3, Nos. 1-3, plus the first two leaves of No. 5. Bound in dark brown cloth with gilt lettering to front board, issues mimeographed on different colored sheets, mimeo illustrations throughout. Boards worn, rubbed and spotted, with fraying to corners; chipping to foot of endpaper and edges of Vol. 2, No. 1; newspaper clippings pasted to inside front cover and front endpaper; light soiling to endpapers; at least one leaf of Vol. 3, No. 5 roughly excised. Occasional pencil marginalia, possibly in the hand of Jean Monk himself. Good.
Bound volume of over two years of this monthly publication of the National Fellowship Club, a social group for Washington's lonely hearted. Founded around 1921 as the Lonesome Club of the Wilson Normal Community Center, to create social opportunities for the influx of single people over 35 to the city during WWI, the group acquired Jean Monk's services as president in 1922. It briefly became the Washington Pastime Club, which issued a periodical called The Lonesome Bug, before being renamed the National Fellowship Club in 1924. The club met every Thursday evening to dance, and later, other evenings of the week as well. Eventually, the Club claimed a membership of between 3,000 to 4,000.
"There are multitudes of men and women here far from home and without friends or acquaintances," Monk is quoted as saying in the Evening Star. "This club stands ready to welcome them, to invite them to spend a pleasant and profitable evening, and to offer them our fellowship and assistance in meeting others who, like themselves, perhaps, are strangers in a strange land." (Evening Star, Dec. 28, 1924)
The newspaper includes information on upcoming dances, as well as a section called "Fellowship Funnies", editorials, news about other social clubs, illustrations of costumes for different themed dances, poems, short narratives, and even the occasional screed by Jean Monk about patriotism, the "supreme good", and other topics.
Rare. We find no record of this or The Lonesome Bug in OCLC or other online records.