UNTIL I FIND--

Pinchon, Edgcumb [1883-1945]

Published by Alfred K. Knopf, 1936

About this Item

Pre-publication "author's copy," which is hand printed in ink on the first blank, and which lacks title page and dedicatory page to Elsie Dufour, his wife. Gift inscription on the second blank as follows: "To Mrs. Burnell - | in love and appreciation. | Claribel Castle." 8vo. [14]3-324[8]p. Tan cloth with black letters and green and red bars on the spine and with what appears to be a water color vignette in black, green and red on the front cover of a man riding a horse at breakneck speed through a forest which is signed "Salter". The endpapers are a map of the Isle of Wight off the English south coast with what must be numbers identifying various locations presumably identified in the text of the novel. Top edge stained maroon, fore- and bottom edges untrimmed. Very minor wear to extremities with nothing rubbed through, top of spine just barely beginning to fray, spine ever so slightly faded, covers slightly darkened, else very good to near fine with no internal markings. This copy was compared to the digitized version on Hathi Trust in order to verify what is missing. Edgcum Pinchon (1883-1945) was born in England. He had a varied writing career as a Socialist journalist (in the 1910s), a novelist and biographer, and in the 1930s, a writer for Paramount Studios. His most famous book, which was made into a movie, was Viva Villa, about Pancho Villa. A NYTimes review describes Until I Find as a "story of boyhood adventure and conflict of soul, romantic gypsy inheritance at odds with a more staid temperament drawn from Anglo-Saxon forbears." The claim is made that Pinchon had gypsy blood himself, but perhaps that is Hollywood PR. In his thirties he was General Secretary of the International Workers Defense League of Los Angeles, a left-wing association interested in economic justice. He was convicted in August 1918 under the Espionage Act for helping to smuggle another man into Mexico to evade the draft, sent to McNeil Prison, Washington State, and paroled October 1918 (per the L.A. Herald and records on Ancestry). His first name is sometimes spelled Edgecomb. Claribel Castle, who has inscribed this book, was apparently his editor. I'm not sure who Mrs. Burnell was. The volume offered here is a fictionalized account of a boyhood set on the Isle of Wight in the era of Queen Victoria. Seller Inventory # 009142

Bibliographic Details

Title: UNTIL I FIND--

Publisher: Alfred K. Knopf

Publication Date: 1936

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket