Imitator Novel by Anonymous (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. "The Imitator" is a "good" 12mo of 7-3/4 inches from which half the spine covering missing, though still firmly bound. It's an anonymous (though we know it's by Percival Pollard, from our other, author-signed copy) first edition published in 1901 (no later dates) by William Marion Reedy of The Mirror, dated St. Louis 1955 and signed by Reedy's biographer, Max Putzel. Our second book, the 1963 Harvard University Press biography of Reedy (who published the notable St. Louis weekly "The Mirror" from 1891 to1920, helping to popularize the earthier, less pretentious native poetry of Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, whose "Spoon River Anthology" first appeared in The Mirror) is dated St. Louis 1963 (the year of publication) and signed in ink to the FFE "Henry and Max" by the author Max Putzel, very-good in a near-fine unclipped dust jacket. Max Putzel taught English and American literature and was associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Connecticut, where he directed the design and construction of the university's graduate center. Putzel was born in Denver and after graduating from college began an apprenticeship in journalism at the Granite City, Ill., Press-Record. He then went to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1937, he went to Europe and reported on the gathering war, returning to the U.S. in 1938. After Pearl Harbor he applied for exemption from the draft as a conscientious objector and joined the U.S. State Department, where he spent the war years working for the Office of Inter-American Affairs. When the war ended, Putzel became a farmer, first in Virginia, then in the Meramec River Valley west of St. Louis, Mo. He returned to graduate school at Yale in 1952 to obtain his doctorate in English and spent the rest of his career teaching and writing. A good friend of both Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken, Pollard -- a literary critic and short-story writer who published 12 novels before his early death -- was also an early adherent of James Branch Cabell and the initial works of Robert W. Chambers. Pollard, aged 42, died unexpectedly of "brain neuritis" in Baltimore in 1911. Both Mencken and Bierce attended his funeral. Pollard also wrote "Lingo Dan," issued by Neale, Washington, in 1903. We buy copies of "Lingo Dan.".…

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. A handsome 12mo half-bound in red leather over strawberry cloth, with five gilt bands dividing the spine into six compartments, identifying title, Pollard as author, and stating in gilt "Presentation Copy." Some rub to corners and to edges of leather spine. Percival Pollard signs his full-page inscription to James Carleton Young Esq. (presumably 1856-1918, a known associate of poets Richard La Gallienne, C.D.G. Roberts and Bliss Carman -- the first British, the latter two Canadian) to a preliminary blank, datelined Saybrook, Conn., Nov. 1902, explaining the anonymous publication of this "satire" was "a ruse of the publisher's, acquiesced in by me because I hoped for a signed edition -- later. But that's not happened, so far." A good friend of both Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken, Pollard -- a literary critic and short-story writer who published 12 novels before his early death -- was also an early adherent of James Branch Cabell and the initial works of Robert W. Chambers. Pollard, aged 42, died unexpectedly of "brain neuritis" in Baltimore in 1911. Both Mencken and Bierce attended his funeral. Pollard also wrote "Lingo Dan," issued by Neale, Washington, in 1903. We buy copies of "Lingo Dan." 196 pp., reduced from $3,250. Inscribed by Author(s).…