The June 2021 meeting featured books published in the 1920s. The decade was selected randomly. It does, however, correspond with what many collectors consider the beginning of the era of modern first editions. The modern books era does not have a universally agreed-upon beginning date; some collectors generally say, "the beginning of the 20th Century" while others say, "beginning in the late 19th Century." Biblio.com, an international online marketplace for rare and collectible books, marks the start of modern firsts as 1919, corresponding with the end of WWI. Using this reference point, the 1920s represents the first decade of the modern books era.
Selected books published in the 1920s are shown here in
chronological order.
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| Glimpses of Authors |
Ticknor, Caroline. Glimpses of Authors. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922. Caroline Ticknor (1866 – 1937) was an author from Boston, best known for her biographies of American authors. She was the granddaughter of William Ticknor, the founder of Ticknor & Fields publishing house. She later became an editor of the International Library of Famous Literature.
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| Sample page and illustration from Glimpses of Authors |
Glimpses of Authors is a semi-autobiographical book as Ticknor used many of her own memories of authors visiting her grandparents and parents along with personal letters received from writers to weave together her own reflections with short biographies of authors such as William Makepeace Thackeray, Alfred Tennyson, Henry James, Eugene Field, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edward Bellamy.
Oxford Poetry 1923
Thompson, David Cleghorn and F. W. Bateson, eds. Oxford Poetry 1923. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923. First edition, in one printing of 1,500
copies. An anthology of poetry written
by students from the colleges of Oxford University. This book is Graham Greene's first appearance
in book form, published when he was nineteen years old. Greene contributes two poems, "Stepping
Stones" and "Apologia."
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| Contributor signatures by Harold Acton, Graham Greene, John Linnell, and David Cleghorn Thompson |
This copy is singed on the front free end paper by three
contributors—Harold Acton, Graham Greene, and John Linnell—and signed on the
title page by co-editor and contributor David Cleghorn Thompson. Acton, Greene, and Thompson all went on to
have distinguished writing careers. As
this is Greene's first publication in book format, this would be his earliest
author-signed book.
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| Babbling April (dust jacket and cover) |
Greene, Graham. Babbling April. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925. Greene's first book, a poetry collection, is scarce as only one printing of 500 copies was produced. Of the 500 copies, only 300 quires (unbound individual copies) were bound and issued. The book reviewed poorly, and only 62 copies sold in the first year. In 1934, the remaining 200 quires were withdrawn from the publisher's stock and scrapped. Of the 300 copies issued, even fewer survive; Greene claimed he later bought and destroyed copies he came across in bookshops but stopped buying them when the price exceeded £1.
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| An American Tragedy |
Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy. London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1926. First published by Boni & Liveright in 1925 in two volumes; published here by Constable in one volume. An American Tragedy is based on an actual crime when, in 1906, Grace Brown's body was found under a boat on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack Mountains; her boyfriend was arrested the next day and later convicted of premeditated murder. Dreiser used the same initials of the convicted murderer, Chester Gillette, for his character Clyde Griffiths. Dreiser's method for selecting the character's name is a nod to details of the true crime case. Gillette checked into a lodge in the Adirondacks that fateful weekend under a pseudonym with the same initials because his monogram was on his suitcase, and he did not want the proprietor of the lodge to become suspicious. Dreiser's fictional story has been adapted for stage and film multiple times since publication.
Dreiser began his writing career as a journalist, but once a
novelist he often fought censorship due to his novels containing sexual
promiscuity, like Sister Carrie (1900) and Jennie Gerhardt
(1911). In 1930, Dreiser was nominated
for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Swedish author Anders Österling; he was
passed over in favor of Sinclair Lewis.
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| The Man Within (1st English edition and 1st American edition) |
Greene, Graham. The Man Within. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1929. First English edition. One of only 2,500 copies of the first printing.
Greene, Graham. The
Man Within. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
Doran & Company, Inc., 1929.
First American edition.
The Man Within was Greene's first published
novel. Greene was 24 years old and a
sub-editor at The Times when the book
was published. Greene began working on The Man Within in 1926 while in the
hospital recuperating from an appendicitis operation. The book was an immediate success and
reviewed well. Though it was his first
published novel, The Man Within was
his third in order of composition. His
first attempt, written while a student at Oxford, was rejected by Heinemann and
never published. His second attempt was
also rejected by Heinemann; originally titled The Episode, it was later published by Heinemann as Rumour at Nightfall (1931).
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| The Book of Common Prayer |
Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David. Boston: Daniel Berkeley Updike at the Merrymount Press, 1929. Limited edition of 500 copies of the Standard Edition of the Book of Common Prayer, 1928. In 1928, the Prayer Book Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America asked Daniel Berkeley Updike, a typographer, printer, and graphic designer, to produce a new Prayer Book for the church. The book was financed by J. Pierpont Morgan and completed in 1929. In 1930, the 500 copies were distributed to the bishops and select leaders of the church.
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| Title page of The Book of Common Prayer |
Daniel Berkeley Updike was an advertising manager and layout artist at Houghton, Mifflin, and Company and Riverside Press until 1892, when he began producing his own books. His first freelance commission was the design of the 1892 Book of Common Prayer. Updike used the proceeds to establish his own fine printing press, the Merrymount Press, in 1893. The Merrymount Press produced a wide range of fine books for publishers, book clubs, churches, libraries, and institutions; its catalogue included printing the first edition of Edith Wharton's first book, The Greater Inclination (Scribner's, 1899), and eight titles for The Limited Editions Club between 1930 and 1942. The 1929 Book of Common Prayer is considered Updike's finest work.
