Description
“TO BETTY, AFFECTIONATELY, DASHIELL HAMMETT”: VERY RARE INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION OF HAMMETT’S FIRST NOVEL, RED HARVEST—“THE FIRST TRULY AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORY”
HAMMETT, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929. Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in custom chemise and half morocco slipcase.
First edition of Hammett’s first novel—a “watershed in the history of the American noir novel” (Marling)—whose legendary detective, the Continental Op, stands as “Hammett’s first important creation and one of the most significant in the literature of crime” (Steinbrunner & Penzler), an exceptional copy inscribed by Hammett, “To Betty affectionately, Dashiell Hammett,” in rarely found original dust jacket.
Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest, is a “watershed in the history of the American noir novel” (Marling, American Roman Noir, 106). At the time of publication Hammett was the star writer for the groundbreaking magazine Black Mask, whose famed editor Joseph Shaw considered Hammett’s lean, gritty authenticity to be “the prime exemplar of the Black Mask school. He named Hammett as the strongest single force in shaping the magazine’s special image in the years 1927 through 1930” (Nolan, Black Mask Boys, 75). Hammett drew on his years as a Pinkerton detective (1915-22) to create the Continental Op—“Hammett’s first important creation and one of the most significant in the literature of crime” (Steinbrunner & Penzler, 105). Introduced in Hammett’s electrifying series of ‘Poisonville’ stories for Black Mask, the Op was, “to quote Ellery Queen, the first truly American detective and his first full-length adventure, Red Harvest, was the first truly American detective story” (TLS). “The crime story would never again be the same… No writer since Edgar Allen Poe had exerted a greater influence on the mystery fiction” (Nolan, 77).
“‘The Cleansing of Poisonville,’ the first installment of the novel, was published in the November 1927 Black Mask” followed by three stories issued in December, January and February 1930. “In February, too, Hammett sent the four parts off to the publishing house of Alfred A. Knopf” (Johnson, 69), unsolicited, and renowned publisher Blanche Knopf quickly responded on March 12, saying “we have read Poisonville with a great deal of interest” (Johnson, 70). “She must have known that in Hammett she had discovered something, the genuine article, a writer who wrote prose clean and spare as Hemingway did, with whom he would most often be compared, and with a voice that similarly spoke of a personal code in a modern world whose institutions were corrupt” (Johnson, 73). Dedicating the novel to Shaw, Red Harvest appeared on February 1, 1929. Although Hammett wrote “of heroes who are superior in degree to ordinary men” (Reilly, 725), “the book is splendidly real… Hammett discovered for it a power of visual description not only riveting in itself but laying out characters in front of one with wonderful clarity” (Keating 13). This inscribed book was apparently enhanced by the addition of the extraordinarily rare jacket by an early owner. Inscribed copies are of the utmost scarcity; only a dedication copy inscribed to Shaw is recorded to have sold at auction in the past 30 years. Layman A.1.1a. Hubin II, V.I:369. While the receipient of this copy has not been positively identified, it is known that Hammett was friendly with actress Betty Sinclair, who appeared as Pansy in the 1931 movie City Streets, co-starring Gary Cooper and based on Hammett’s original story. Minor penciled bibliographic notations to front pastedown.
Text generally fresh with only minor soiling to a few early leaves and lower fore-edge, slight edge-wear, small bit of dampstaining to lower edge of front board; slight edge-wear, soiling to price-clipped dust jacket, which has some minor touch-up. A most desirable extremely good inscribed copy, with the rarely found dust jacket.
