BOSTON BLACKIE
New York: The H.K. Fly Company Publishers, 1919. First Edition. Collection of Boyle's Boston Blackie stories, first published in Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and American magazine, which he cobbled together and revised slightly to resemble a novel. His stories, featuring the explots of this gentleman safecracker, were wildly popular in their time, and the source for several silent films and early talkies - most notable among these being The Face in the Fog (1922), featuring Lionel Barrymore in the title role. Hubin, p.43; Pronzini & Muller, pp.79-80; Smith B-839. Item #4867
First Printing. Octavo (cm); black cloth, with titling and pictorial elements stamped in orange on spine and front cover; [ii],[8],9-318pp, with frontispiece and three plates of illustrations by W.H.D. Koerner. Spine ends gently nudged, rough erasure to front pastedown, with some offsetting to endpapers, and faint foxing to text edges (particularly on title page and plate margins); shallow ink stain (production flaw?) at lower margin of pp.61-62; Very Good+, with the lettering and pictorial elements notably unrubbed, lacking the scarce dustjacket.
Price: $300.00