The Western Shore
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925.
First edition. Signed by Clarkson Crane on the front free endpaper in ink, warmly inscribed to poet and medical librarian Ignatius McGuire. McGuire wrote his own name above that in pencil, "Princeton, Dec. 22, 1930." [viii], 303 pp. Publisher's black cloth lettered in orange. A Near Fine copy with light wear at tips, pages toned with age and binding slightly shaken, in an About Very Good example of the rare dust jacket, missing a rectangular chip at the head, lightly foxed, two closed tears, small stain to spine panel, price intact ($2.00 net). Scarce thus.
The author's debut novel. Clarkson (1894-1971) was a Berkeley alumnus slumming it on the Left Bank when he wrote it. As the Berkeley college history site Gay Bears relates, "took the cliché-ridden genre of the 'college story' — with its pennants and hip flasks and coonskin coats — and gave it a new and unexpected twist: one of the main characters is a homosexual professor of English teaching at Berkeley in the year 1919." While savaged by critics and a poor seller, it was way ahead of its time. It was the first book published by a mainstream press to have characters speculating about each others' sexualities. Unusually for its time the gay characters weren't portrayed as stereotypes or villains, and none met a grisly end as punishment for their transgressions. The author's papers are on file at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. A nearly-forgotten but significant work of gay fiction.
Price: $4,500.00