On the Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent
Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, 1901.
"Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." This utterly superb association copy is signed by James Creelman on the front free endpaper and inscribed to his employer William Randolph Hearst, the source of that alleged quote on the Spanish American War, made famous by this book. Today the quote and the story of its telling (whether true or false) constitute perhaps the single most famous anecdote in the history of journalism. This copy ties Creelman to Hearst and suggests that Hearst was well aware Creelman had attributed it to him with publication of the book. Unfortunately, how exactly Hearst felt about this news is not revealed in its pages, though.
First edition, first printing. 418, [8] pp. with eight advertising pages at rear. Illustrated with black and white halftone plates. Bound in publisher's red cloth with decorative gilt stamping. Near Fine with slightly sunned spine, light wear and mottling to cloth. Evidence of bookseller ticket removal to paste down. Housed in a gray cloth clamshell case with unsophisticated title labels.
Allegedly the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst telegraphed his famous words to the artist Frederick Remington, who was on assignment to Cuba and had cabled home to announce that there was essentially no war to depict. Hearst later claimed that he had never said any such thing and defenders of Hearst (people of his stature never lacking defenders even in death) cite a lack of physical evidence, but this lively personal account of yellow journalism by Creelman, who also played an important role in promoting the Spanish-American war, argues otherwise:
Creelman was Hearst's top reporter and related the anecdote as part of On the Great Highway's advance publicity without prompting any public denial from his employer. Whether or not Hearst said it, he was keen to promote a war with Spain, and the famous phrase serves to perfectly encapsulate the arrogance of a media mogul who can create the events out of whole cloth that his newspapers, with their ostensible objectivity, will then cover. As stories go, it's a compelling one, so whether or not it is technically fiction, it will continue to be told for some time."The proprietor of the Journal was as good as his word, and to-day the gilded arms of Spain, torn from the front of the palace in Santiago de Cuba, hang in his office in Printing House Square, a lump of melted silver, taken from the smoking deck of the shattered Spanish flagship, serves as his paper weight, and the bullet-pierced headquarters flag of the Eastern army of Cuba—gratefully presented to him in the field by General Garcia—adorns his wall."
Price: $12,500