Association Copies

Beau Geste.

Percival Christopher Wren. London: John Murray, 1927. 

Beau Geste is a 1924 adventure novel set in the period before WWI. This important association copy is inscribed to Ronald Colman, who starred in the 1926 film adaptation of the novel. It is accompanied by an ALS from Wren’s wife, a TLS from the author to Colman, and a copy of the trade edition in its dust jacket.

African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist.

Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910.

First edition, presentation copy inscribed to Oscar King Davis (1866-1932), U.S. journalist and war correspondent.

Chronicle of Roosevelt’s expedition to Africa to collect specimens for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. In true bibliophile fashion, Roosevelt brought along his ‘Pigskin Library’ of literary classics. He selected pigskin for its durability, writing, “The books were stained with blood, sweat, gun oil, dust and ashes; ordinary bindings either vanished or became loathsome, whereas pigskin merely grew to look as a well-used saddle looks” (p. 570).