Between the Covers

Hardcover. First edition. Octavo. 48pp. Stiff flexible printed self-wrappers. Title in black and red. Small tears at the edges of the slightly yapped edges, small tear on the half-title, small chip at the foot, a very good copy, lacking the original slipcase. One of 500 copies printed at the Hillacre Press. Reed's first work published in book form. A long poem set amongst the artistic set of New York. This copy Inscribed by Reed to Albert Boyden: "To Alb Boyden with apologies and compliments of the author John S. Reed." Boyden was the managing editor at *McClure's Magazine*, one of the great publications of the so-called Golden Age of Magazines, and the pinnacle of muckraking journalism, where Reed worked alongside of Lincoln Steffens (to whom the book is dedicated), *McClure's* co-founder Ida Tarbell, John Phillips, William Allen White, and other notables. All of them appear in Reed's picaresque and affectionate satire of the literati of Greenwich Village and their eating and drinking habits and haunts. Boyden figures prominently:

"Here comes ALB BOYDEN in the King of Shirts
He is so fashionable that it hurts.
Indeed, in gazing on him one suspects
That clothes can vanquish physical defects.
So cavalier his air, who would not be him?
Young ladies come from Illinois to see him!
The rest of us are good at so-and-so,-
But ALB's the one who makes the wheels go.
He beats down struggling authors in their price,
Refuses stories with a grace so nice..."

[Cataloger's note: while Reed's reportage achieved him lasting fame, his poetry seems more to presage the verse of Dr. Suess.]

Boyden appears elsewhere as a subject in the poem as well.

Ida Tarbell later wrote of the atmosphere at *McClure's*: "Was there ever a group like it? Was there ever so much fun in work?" - a sentiment that seems confirmed in Reed facetious poem. Reed's radicalism was seeded in his tenure at *McClure's*. Not long after this poem was published, he joined the staff of *The Masses*.

A significant association.

Item #408018