Description

PRESENTATION COPY OF THE CASE OF THE DANGEROUS DOWAGER,WARMLY INSCRIBED BY ERLE STANLEY GARDNER TO HIS STENOGRAPHER

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Dangerous Dowager. New York: William Morrow, (1937). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition, presentation copy, warmly inscribed: “To Louise, whose twinkling eyes and perpetual youth gave me the nucleus of an idea. And, incidentally, she’s the gal for whom I’m cooking the steak on the back cover. With love—and lots of it. Yours for keeps, Erle. To Louise Weissberger from Erle Stanley Gardner. April 1937.”

“In Perry Mason, the combative defense attorney who manipulates the legal system to vindicate the innocent, Gardner created one of the most widely recognized figures in American literature? Mason came to embody the ideal of the American lawyer” (ANB). This is number 10 of 86 books in the series. Hubin, 162. Louise Weissberger was one of Gardner’s full-time stenographers, who he referred to collectively as “The Fiction Factory.” “All in all, his factory produced more than a million words per year,” which helped to explain Gardner’s astonishing productivity (NPR). On the rear panel of the dust jacket, Gardner is shown cooking a steak on a campfire grill, as mentioned in the inscription. Rear panel and flap of a separate dust jacket affixed to rear endpapers.

Book very good, with light scattered foxing and a few rub marks to original cloth. Price-clipped dust jacket about-fine.