Their Yesterdays

Chicago: Book Supply Company, 1912. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (20cm). First edition sheets in the remainder binding, with A.L. Burt slug at base of spine, but in the correct Book Supply Company dustwrapper. Green cloth hardcover, titles stamped in white on spine and front cover; dustjacket; 311pp. Near Fine in the original pictorial dustwrapper, lightly soiled and rubbed on lighter portions, still on the better side of VG.

A love story, featuring an unnamed couple in an unspecified locale, written to exemplify what Wright considered the "Thirteen Truly Great Things In Life - dreams, occupation, knowledge, ignorance, religion, tradition, temptation, life, death, failure, success, love, and memories." Wright, today little-remembered, was the best-selling author of his day and is reputed to be the first American author ever to sell a million copies of a book. Wright's popular success has often been cited as evidence of American readers' lack of discernment, one mid-century critic having famously noted: "Harold Bell Wright supplied more negative data on the literary quality of the taste of the fiction reading public than any other author. No critic has ever damned Wright with even the faintest praise." (Irving Harlow Hart, "The Hundred Leading Authors of Best Sellers in Fiction from 1895 to 1944," in Publisher's Weekly for Jan 19, 1946).