GOLD, Michael (novel); SIMON, Howard (illustrations)

Jews Without Money [Presentation Copy to Charles Erskine Scott Wood]

New York: Horace Liveright, 1930. Second Printing (same year as the first). Octavo (21cm); black cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine and front cover; illustrated endpapers; [12],13-309,[3]pp; illus. Inscribed by the author in year of publication the half-title page: "To Erskine and Sara / with never-ceasing affection / Sincerely & fraternally / Michael Gold." Further inscribed, by Wood: "From Erskine & Sara to their dear friend Max Rosenberg - echoing the above - The Cats / July 1930." A tight, clean copy in the original cloth binding; board corners lightly bumped and a few mild taps to board edges, the endpapers illustrated after woodcuts by Howard Simon. Solidly Very Good, lacking the scarce dustwrapper.

A great association copy, inscribed by Gold to one of the leading leftist intellectuals and authors of his time. Wood (1852-1944) was a self-styled anarchist, aesthete, and painter. As an attorney in the 1920s he defended a number of prominent figures on the left, including the anarchist lecturer Emma Goldman, and contributed prolifically to the radical periodicals of the period. With his second wife Sara Bard Field, he was a long-time resident of Los Gatos, California, and was known for entertaining visitors at the estate "The Cats," mentioned in the present inscription. Interestingly, Wood did not have a reputation for sympathy with doctrinaire Marxist thought; it seems unlikely that Gold would have written Wood such an effusive inscription even a few years later, as during the Great Depression he would rise to become one of the leading apparatchiks in the CPUSA.

Price: $1,500.00

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