A History of the Standard Oil Company.

TARBELL, Ida M [John D. Rockefeller].

Item Number: 130598

New York: McClure, Phillips Co, 1905.

First edition, early printing of investigative journalist Tarbell’s definitive two-volume work on Standard Oil, featuring 32 pages of illustrations including frontispiece portraits of Rockefeller. Octavo, 2 volumes, original cloth, top edge gilt. Signed by Ida Tarbell in volume one. Scarce and desirable signed.

Famed as the pioneer of investigative journalism, Tarbell was "one of the most influential muckrakers of the Gilded Age, helping to usher in that age of political, economic and industrial reform known as the Progressive Era. 'They had never played fair,' Tarbell wrote of Standard Oil, 'and that ruined their greatness for me'… Tarbell would redefine investigative journalism with a 19-part series in McClure's magazine, a masterpiece of journalism and an unrelenting indictment that brought down one of history's greatest tycoons and effectively broke up Standard Oil's monopoly. By dint of what she termed 'steady, painstaking work,' Tarbell unearthed damaging internal documents, supported by interviews with employees, lawyers and—with the help of Mark Twain—candid conversations with Standard Oil's most powerful senior executive at the time, Henry H. Rogers, which sealed the company's fate" (Smithsonian). The New York Times rated Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company number five in a list of the top 100 works in 20th-century American journalism. In very good condition, stamp to the title pages.