The Re-Creation of Brian Kent

Chicago: Book Supply Company, 1919. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (20cm). Maroon cloth hardcover, titled in gilt on spine and front cover; dustjacket; 352pp. Near Fine in the original pictorial dustwrapper, slightly rubbed and edgeworn with triangular chip to upper margin of rear panel and small loss at crown; VG.

A romance of crime and redemption set in the Missouri Ozarks, source for the 1925 silent film starring Helene Chadwick and Kenneth Harlan. 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).