First edition of The Scarlet Car by Richard Harding Davis, illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele. Early 20th century adventures of four college students and their automobile.
Written by Richard Harding Davis. Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele. June, 1907 first edition. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
The Scarlet Car tells of the adventures of college students Winthrop, Sam, Beatrice, and Peabody, and Winthrop's car, also a character in the story at a time when automobiles were still new and exciting.
Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) was, first and foremost, a journalist who documented the world at war during the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and WW I. He rose to prominence during the era of sensationalistic "yellow journalism". "If it bleeds, it leads". But Davis aspired to be a respected foreign correspondent, a more glamorous yet serious journalistic career. He succeeded, writing for the New York Herald, The Times, and Scribner's, and publishing several well-regarded books. Herald publisher William Randolph Hearst was famously accused of exaggerating the war to sell newspapers, which might have implicated Davis, but when his articles were edited to make the facts fit the paper's story, he quit. He wrote Cuba In Wartime, Soldiers of Fortune, and many other influential non-fiction books, novels, and plays.
Frederic Dorr Steele (1873 - 1944) was an American illustrator whose most well-known work was The Return of Sherlock Holmes for Collier's Magazine and the book series. Steele is credited with giving Holmes this trademark pipe and deerstalker hat.
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Condition*: Very Good. Lacks dust jacket, as issued. Tan cloth cover boards with black and red cover design, front and back: Light soiling from handling; small stain on the front, within the graphic design; lightly bumped corners; edgewear at the head and tail of the spine. Interior: Handwritten name, small, on front fly leaf; frontispiece tissue has small tear to top left corner and small moisture stain; illustrations at pages 12 and 50 are loose.
* Based on Guidelines of the Independent Online Booksellers' Association.
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