BLACKGUARD ..

Chicago: Covici-McGee Publishers, 1923. Octavo, pp. [1-8] 1-215 [216: printer's imprint], inserted frontispiece with drawing by Wallace Smith, publisher's pictorial black cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, decorated endpapers. First edition. The author's first novel. An angry young man (an aspiring poet and petty thief) returns to his midwestern hometown and finds companionship with Crazy Georgie May, a local prostitute. Bodenheim's "novels are savagely realistic, revealing him as 'an impassioned and bitter critic of current institutions' ... The keynote of all his work is hatred, hatred for meanness and dirt and cruelty, and sometimes, it seems, hatred for humanity itself. He has fallen into neglect and the stream of fiction has run past him, but he was one of the pioneers in bringing naturalism of the French school into American writing." - Kunitz and Haycraft, eds., Twentieth Century Authors, p. 155. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 B-703. Bookplate of Geraldine Wilson Knight affixed to the front paste-down. Inner front hinge a trifle weak, a very good copy in publisher's paper box (worn and taped). (#160138) (Inventory #: 160138)