[Item #25752] Criminals of Chicago. CRIME, THE UNDERWORLD, pseud Eleasar Issac Goldreich?

Criminals of Chicago

Boston: Roxburgh Publishing Company, 1921. First Edition. Octavo. Blue cloth boards, lettered in gilt on spine and front cover; 258pp. Slightly shaken; spine gilt dulled, legible with difficulty; internally clean, tight and unmarked. A solidly VG copy, lacking the presumed dustwrapper.

Extremely uncommon survey of vice and crime in the Windy City, presented as an exercise in "psychopathology" but written in a flat, hard-boiled style by the enigmatic "Prince Immanuel of Jerusalem," whose true identity is shrouded in mystery. This pseudonym turns up in a number of unexpected locations: as a steerage immigrant to California in 1909, where he is described as "the son of the Sultan of Turkey and an Arabian Jewess" and is apparently seeking to raise funds for the construction of a "Universal University" on the site of King Solomon's Temple (see The Lompoc [California] Journal for Jan 3, 1909); as the headmaster of an institution called the "University College of Africa," in Cairo, Egypt, ca. 1917 (see Hill, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Papers, v.11, p.769n); and as the creator of an invented language, "Universal," ca. 1914 (see Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages, p.296). In the first two sources he is identified as "I.E. Goldreich" and "Eleasar Isaac Goldreich" respectively, and he appears to have been a one-time British citizen. He was responsible for at least two other published works: Postcards of Palestine (Cairo, ca 1912) and Chaos: Written for the Illiterati (Columbia City, IN: 1947). A scarce and somewhat mysterious Chicago item.

Price: $450.00

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