Freeman Wills Crofts | The Cask, 1920, signed together with two typed notes

Freeman Wills Crofts

The Cask. London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1920

FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR ("F.W. Crofts") on the title-page, 8vo, original red cloth lettered in black and blind, DUST-JACKET, light browning to endpapers, some light spotting, head and foot of spine bumped and faded, soiled dust-jacket worn at extremities with some loss and abrasions

EXTREMELY RARE IN DUST-JACKET

Also included is a typed letter signed ("F.W. Crofts") to the American collector Paul S. Seybolt in which the author states he "...shall be delighted to autograph your copy of The Cask if you care to send it across". Evidently concerned about cost of postage he wonders whether Seybolt "...will be content" with pasting in his signature (26 June 1937, Blackheath, Guildford). Evidently the collector wasn't content, for the customs declaration form is enclosed, together with a section of the parcel wrappings (both to Crofts and, on the reverse, to Seybolt).

It seems that Paul S. Seybolt refunded Crofts for the postage: there is a typed postcard (with typed name) thanking Seybolt "for postage" and commenting it was "most kind of you to think of it" (10 August 1937, Blackheath, Guildford).

As noted by Melvyn Barnes in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (London, 1980), "Croft's first detective novel, The Cask, remained his masterpiece. It has been generally regarded by experts as the finest first novel in the field, and as a significant landmark in the history of the genre..."

LITERATURE

Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone

PROVENANCE

The Alexis Galanos Collection