1929-1966.
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Hardcover. A group of 69 novels by the prolific pulp and romance author Peggy Gaddis including 39 Inscribed books, six of which are Dedication Copies, plus her first original novel, *Shameless* annotated throughout by fellow writer Anita Blackmon. The books, published between 1929 and 1966, are all first editions with all but two of the volumes in their scarce (or in some cases rare) original dustwrappers. The books were collected by her close friends William Fountaine, a bookseller from Columbus, Ohio, and Leota Foreman, a collector and correspondent whose name was used for the title character in two of the books: *Leota Foreman R.N.* and *Nurse Leota’s Romance*. Overall the books are near fine with some page toning and scattered foxing to a few titles in very good dustwrappers with typical wear at the edges, sunning to the spines, and tiny “signed by author” labels affixed to some of the spines.
Born Erolie Pearl Gaddis in Gaddistown, Georgia, she attended nearby Reinhardt College and married former minstrel John Sherman Dern in 1931. Gaddis wrote stories in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, for various periodicals such as *Breezy Stories*, *Snappy Stories*, *Thrilling Love*, *Telling Tales*, *Cupid’s Diary*, and *All-Story Love*. It was after two of her serialized pulp stories were published as books that she set out to write her first original novel *Shameless* in 1935 for William Godwin, and quickly followed it that same year with five additional titles.
While Gaddis’s early books from low-rent publishers like Godwin and Phoenix were often racy stories, with titles such as *Infidelity*, *Unfaithful?*, and *No Nice Girl*, she later transitioned into more mainstream women's novels about plucky young women looking for love while juggling a career, often as a nurse, doctor, or retail executive. Gaddis was a prolific author for four decades with more than 150 books to her credit, often publishing several a year through a strict 3,000-words-a-day and six-days-a-week regimen. Such high output meant she wrote not only under her maiden name and married name, but also used at least a half dozen other pseudonyms: Perry Lindsay, Joan Sherman, Georgia Craig, Gail Jordan, and Roberta Courtland.
These books come from the library of William Fountaine a bookseller and book collector from Columbus, Ohio, who also ran a lending library, which was an important market for Gaddis’s novels. Some time during the 1940s the two became well-acquainted, along with reader and Gaddis pen pal Leota Foreman, forming something of a mutual admiration society and booklovers trio. Among the many effusive and humorously inscribed books in this collection are six Dedication Copies: three to Foreman - *Perry Kimbro, R.N.* and two copies of *Back Home*, each with a different inscription; and, more curiously, three copies of *Dark Passion* to Fountaine, each also with a different inscription. Included are two photos laid into a copy of *Leota Foreman, R.N.* (which oddly is not dedicated to Foreman but rather Gaddis’s husband) showing Gaddis with Foreman outside Gaddis’s Stone Mountain home and another of Foreman sitting in Fountaine’s living room by his library.
Gaddis' romance titles have been of late avidly sought after and this collection represents a significant number of titles from this prolific Depression-era Southern women’s writer with half being association copies and all but two in their scarce or rare original dustwrappers.
Item #438416
