A Son of His Father

New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1925. First Edition. First printing, with publisher's (1) at end of text. Octavo (20cm). Red cloth hardcover, titles stamped in black on spine and front cover; dustjacket; 355pp. Scattered faint foxing, scuff to upper edge of text block, else tight and Near Fine in the original pictorial dustwrapper, lightly rubbed on lighter portions, but still very well-preserved, Near Fine.

A western romance, set in the border country of southern Arizona. Harold Bell Wright, not much read today, 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).