The Cruise of the Dazzler.

LONDON, Jack.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 128002

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906.

First English edition of London‘s scarcest work of fiction and his only “juvenile” novel. Octavo, bound in three quarter morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, illustrated with six plates.  From the library of William Safire, although not marked. William Safire was an important American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign for the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. After Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a speechwriter for him and Spiro Agnew. He authored several political columns in addition to his weekly column “On Language” in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death and authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. In good condition. With the original cloth cover bound in at rear. Scarce. Bookplate to the pastedown. Rare.

At 15, escaping a grueling factory job, London borrowed money for a small sloop called the Razzle Dazzle and after "joining a gang of hard-drinking hoodlums known as 'the Oyster Pirates' on San Francisco Bay, these escapades were fictionalized in the Cruise of the Dazzler." Seaman, laborer, gold miner, journalist and writer, London published this early adventure tale of a mischievous boy shortly before his very popular Call of the Wild (1903).