Description

PRESENTATION COPY OF THE CASE OF THE VAGABOND VIRGIN, INSCRIBED BY ERLE STANLEY GARDNER IN YEAR OF PUBLICATION

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Vagabond Virgin. New York: William Morrow, (1948). Octavo, original green-gray paper boards, original dust jacket.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed to his stenographer: “To Louise with love from your Erle. Erle Stanley Gardner. July 1948.”

“Despite the fact that compelling evidence of virginity is not offered, the lady vagabond is well done, and the plot is better-than-average Gardner; indeed, it is surprisingly good” (Barzun & Taylor, 1422). “Gardner was, as Francis M. Nevins wrote in a eulogistic essay, ‘one of the great natural storytellers,’ a writer who left behind ‘over a quarter of a century of rich creative work which will be read and reprinted and reread as long as the art of storytelling is cherished” (Steinbrunner & Penzler, 166). This is number 32 of 86 books in the series. Hubin, 163. Louise 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).

Book with only faint foxing mainly to edges of text block, price-clipped dust jacket with only minor rubbing to extremities. A near-fine inscribed copy.