In the Web; or, An Artful Villain

New York: Street & Smith Corporation. Near Fine. [1924] (c.1905). Later Printing. Softcover. (illustrated wraps) [light external wear and minor soiling, tiny tear at top of spine; binding is tight and square and completely intact, pages are supple and only mildly age-toned]. (The Adventure Library, No. 128) Series Early 20th-century "dime novel" about a detective in pursuit of a master safecracker. This copy is in remarkable condition considering the cheapness of its manufacture, and shows no signs of ever having been read. (The publisher's ads in the back of the book fully support the dating of this printing as 1924, although even if they weren't present one could confidently assign a mid-1920s date based only on the content of the rear-cover blurb for the "Street & Smith Novels," which promises the reader "no jazz [and] no sex" as well as a respite from "rolling around in your Lady Lizzie or listening to the blah-blah of your radio" -- none of which would have appeared on a book printed in 1905.) There are 14 pages of ads, including listings for titles in these series: the Merriwell Series (through no. 104, with additional information on 13 more titles to be published in the first half of 1925); the Alger Series (through no. 123, plus 13 forthcoming titles); Sport Stories (about "Jack Lightfoot"), 14 titles; and Western Story Library (adventures of "Ted Strong"), 37 titles plus 6 forthcoming). The author (1867-1933) was a journalist and a prolific author of what was called "boys' fiction," and one of the few authors (maybe the only) to publish a contemporaneous account of his experience in churning out this sort of stuff over the course of 20+ years ("The Fiction Factory," published in 1912, and written -- appropriately -- under a pseudonym, John Milton Edwards). He also developed, late in his life, an ingenious system for fiction writers, called "Plotto." Five boxes of his papers, I'm happy to report, are held by the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division .