Floyd Dell Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Floyd Dell (1887-1969) was a major force in American literature in from 1910-1920. Dell, who began writing poetry as a young man, worked as a cub reporter for the "Davenport Times" before moving to the "Chicago Evening Post", where he became editor of the paper's "Friday Literary Review" in 1911. While in that position, Dell promoted the works of such writers as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. He moved to New York in 1914 to help edit the radical journal, "The Masses", and the self-proclaimed Socialist would later go on to co-publish "The Liberator" (1918-1924), a similar publication. In 1916, Dell became involved in the Provincetown Theatre Group, whose first play was Dell's King Arthur's Socks. The group was best known, however, for introducing the works of Eugene O'Neill. After WWI, Dell published a number of novels, including the autobiographical Moon-Calf (1920) as well as Janet Marsh (1923) and Runaway (1925). He also wrote several nonfiction works, including Upton Sinclair (1927) and Love in the Machine Age (1930), and Dell published his autobiography, Homecoming, in 1933. By 1935, sales of his works had dropped dramatically, and Dell joined the WPA as an editor and ghostwriter.