SANTEE, Ross

The Pooch [Inscribed Presentation Copy to Medal of Honor Recipient Dan Edwards, with Original Drawing]

New York: Cosmopolitan, 1931. First Edition. First printing. Mustard-tan pictorial cloth (hardcover); 253pp. Spotting and light soil to boards; internally clean and tight. A very good copy, lacking the dustwrapper. Inscribed on front endpaper: "For Dan Edwards / I think you an' this Pooch would have been pretty good friends - anyway you are salty enough to understand him / Best luck always," signed, with an original ink portrait of "The Pooch," undated but apparently contemporary with publication. A western novel, told from the point of view of a working cowboy's fox terrier.

The book has been additionally inscribed by Dan Edwards on front pastedown: "Hey Jayne, But your mother(?) too - Here's betting this pooch can beat all the houns [sic] your'e [sic] ol' man plays - If he don't I think you'll still like him," signed "Dan," dated August 1935.

While Santee's illustrated inscriptions are not especially uncommon, this is an excellent association copy. Daniel Richmond Edwards (1897-1967) received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroics during the battle of Soissons in the First World War, during which he amputated his own arm with a bolo knife in order to capture a patrol of German soldiers. His ensuing fame, enhanced by his appointment as Warren G. Harding's press secretary in 1920 and a popular lecture tour in 1921, made "Dan" Edwards a household name in the Twenties and Thirties. This biography by Lowell Thomas, already well-known for his profiles of T.E. Lawrence and Julius Lauterbach, did much to build the mythology around Edwards, who in later years developed a reputation as an entertaining fabulist, claiming (among many other things) to have served as a Japanese army officer during the invasion of Manchuria and as a seaman in the Venezuelan navy. His popular notoriety notwithstanding, Edwards' autograph is far from common; it appears to be nearly absent from the marketplace and missing from many assembled collections of autographs of Medal of Honor recipients.

Price: $500.00

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