CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER - AUTOGRAPH CIRCA 1941 CO-SIGNED BY: CECIL ROBERTS, BELLAMY PARTRIDGE, PIERRE VAN PAASEN, OLGA KOCHANSKA, LEW R. SARETT, BOB CASEY, L. BURKE, STEWART HALL HOLBROOK, GENEVIEVE FOSTER, CARL VAN DOREN, MARY ELLEN CHASE, JACK HARDING - HFSID 29588
Sale Price $450.00
Reg. $550.00
BEST-SELLING AUTHORS of 1941: CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER, CARL VAN DOREN,
GENEVIEVE FOSTER and OTHERS.
14 authors sign a guest register at Marshall Field department store,
Chicago.
Signatures: "Cornelia Otis Skinner", "Jack Harding 'I Like
Brazil'/- and the too long deferred meeting/with a gracious lady was a
distinct/pleasure/October 8, 1941", "Bellamy Partridge Easton, Conn.", "Pierre
van Paassen", "Olga Kochaniska 'Arrest and Exile'"/Oct. 29, 1941", "For Rose
Aller Harbaugh/A choice spirit/Faithfully/Lew Sarett", "Bob Casey, Chicago Daily
News, Nov. 4 -'41", "L. Burke. N.Y.C. 1941" and on verso
"[name illegible]/(who is turning over a new leaf/on November 8,
1941", "Stewart H. Holbrook/November 14, 1941", "Mary Ellen Chase - with many
thanks/to Marshall Field & Company and to Miss/Oller and her staff, November
15 th, 1941", "Genevieve Foster/I shall open all my letters after this!/'George
Washington's World'", "For Heaven's Sake - and a return/soon to a city of
pleasant memories/Cecil Roberts" and "Some day I'll write the Open
History/of my admiration for this store/Sincerely,/Carl Van Doren/22 November
1941", 2p (front and verso), 7½x11¼. It rare to find in recent times a classic department
store which upholds a city's culture. Marshall Field & Company of Chicago, a
business tracing its origins back to 1852, is an example of a quality department
store which helped establish the Chicago arts scene. In 1914, Marshall Field
opened a book department featuring in-store signings by authors. This 2-sided
page is from the store's guest register for October-November 1941, when many
celebrated authors appeared. The inscriptions are to Rose Oller, later
Harbaugh, longtime manager of the book department. Among the signers here are
CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER (1901-1979), a stage and film actress who also
wrote eight plays, satirical verses and essays. Her Our Hearts Were Young and
Gay, a description of a European vacation, was one of several of her works
made into films. JACK HARDING (d.1954), an advertising man married to
prolific author Bertita Harding, wrote his own 1940 book about their vacation in
Brazil. EDWARD BELLAMY PARTRIDGE (1877-1960) published Big
Family in 1941, a collection of family jokes and stories which was the
long-awaited sequel to Country Lawyer (1928). PIERRE VAN PAASEN
(1895-1968), was a Dutch-Canadian-American journalist, a global
correspondent for the New York Evening World. He wrote warnings not only about
the menace of Naziism, but also of radical Islam - in the early 1930s! Two of
his books, That Day Alone and The Time is Now appeared in 1941.
OLGA KOCHANSKA was the subject, not the author of Arrest and
Exile, Lilian T. Mowrer's book documenting the ordeal of Kochanska, a
Polish woman exiled to Siberia after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland
in 1939. LEW SARETT (1888-1954) taught speech at Northwestern
University (1920-1953), wrote six volumes of poetry and three speech textbooks.
A lover of nature and wildlife, he often teamed with Carl Sandburg for lectures
and readings by "the poet of the wilderness" and "the poet of the city."
ROBERT J. CASEY (1890-1962), a decorated combat veteran of World
War I, covered international affairs and wrote a humor column for the Chicago
Daily News from 1920-1947. In 1940, he covered the London Blitz for the paper,
and he traveled to many theaters of World War II. STEWART HOLBROOK
(1893-1964), a high school dropout who started writing while working as a
logger in his native Oregon, was a popular nonfiction writer in his day and
almost forgotten until recently rediscovered. The Oregon Book Awards
nonfiction category is now named for him. Holbrooke's books include
Murder Out Yonder, a collection of true crime stories from rural and
small town America. MARY ELLEN CHASE (1887-1973) wrote novels (Mary
Peters, 1934; Windswept, 1941), children's books (The Story
of Lighthouses, 1965) and three autobiographical works, all of
which carried the strong regional favor of her native Maine. She also wrote
biblical studies (Life and Language in the Old Testament, 1955).
GENEVIEVE FOSTER (1893-1979) wrote children's books about famous
persons, including Augustus Caesar, Columbus and Galileo. She conceived these
books as "horizontal history," describing the world at the time each person
lived. Her George Washington's World was a Newbery Honor Book in
1942. CECIL ROBERTS (1892-1976), a British journalist and novelist,
served in the British Embassy in Washington during World War II. In 1941 he
published A Man Arose, a poetic tribute to Winston Churchill. CARL VAN
DOREN (1885-1950), a literary critic and professor at Columbia
University, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for his biography of Benjamin
Franklin. Carl was the brother of fellow Columbia University professor and
Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Van Doren and the uncle of Charles Van Doren, briefly
famous from the rigged quiz show Twenty One. Binding remnants at left
edge from removal from book. Lightly soiled at lower right. Otherwise, fine
condition.
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