T.S. Stribling

Backwater

originally published:
Garden City : Doubleday Doran
1930

We offered this copy of the first edition, from the library of a relative of the author, in our Catalog 124.

reference info

bio notes:
born: 3/4/1881
died: 7/8/1965
born as: Thomas Sigismund Stribling
nationality: USA

Tennessee-born novelist best remembered for his single mystery, The Clues of the Carribees, and for his trilogy of novels about a country town, the middle volume of which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Collecting tips:

Thomas Sigismund Stribling is kind of an interesting partially-forgotten author. He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Store (1932), the second part of a trilogy that included The Forge and Unfinished Cathedral (1934), and which was apparently based on the doings in his hometown of Clifton, Tennessee. He also wrote a collection of well-regarded detective stories Clues of the Carribees (1929), which appears as both a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone, and a Queen's Quorum title, both seminal lists of collectible detective fiction. Although his other early books are less well-known, it seems that even these command a premium when found in nice jackets.