THE OPEN BOAT. And Other Tales of Adventure

1898. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1898. Original olive-green cloth decorated in silver and dark green.

First Edition of Crane's seventh book, believed to have consisted of only 1500 copies. Next to THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, the title story is Crane's best-known work: it is a tale based upon his own narrow escape from death when the "Commodore," on a surreptitious expedition to Cuba, went down off the coast of Jacksonville on New Year's Day 1897, leaving four men in an open life-boat. The volume is dedicated to the oiler, who died in the disaster (and in the book), as well as to the captain and the steward of the "Commodore." Of the seven other "tales of adventure," several are quite well-known as well -- such as "Flanagan," "A Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and "Death and the Child" (a war story reminiscent of THE RED BADGE but set in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, where Crane was a foreign correspondent for the Hearst organization). THE OPEN BOAT is a handsome book, with an artistically appropriate binding design. This is a very good-plus copy, with minor cover soil and the usual minor erosion of the silver pigment. Williams & Starrett 15 (binding 1, with the publisher's spine imprint measuring 11/32-inch vertically); Blanck 4079 (binding B -- "sequence arbitrary"). Provenance: signatures of H. Alton Brubaker and of Andrew S. Upson (a US Navy ship was named for an earlier Andrew S. Upson who was a fatality in the Civil War); old sticker of Stanton's Old City Book Store of Wheeling (WV).