Romney (and Other New Works about Philadelphia)

University Park, PA, U.S.A.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. Fine in a Fine dustjacket. Bound in full, light blue cloth. The spine is stamped in gilt. Marbled blue endpapers. 259pps., with 10 full-page illustrations and a frontispiece of the subject. There is a very slight splay to the front board, otherwise flawless: clean, tight, square, and bright. All tips are sharp. No reading wear and no previous ownership markings. The dustjacket, glossy in a mylar sleeve, is as new. SIGNED and dated by the editor -- without further inscription -- on the title-page. <br><br><b><font color=#003366> "Owen Wister is known to most Americans as the creator of the heroic cowboy in The Virginian (1902). Despite his success as a Western novelist, Wister's failure to write about his native city of Philadelphia has been lamented by many for the loss of a literary 'might-have-been.' If only, sighed Wister's contemporary Elizabeth Robins Pennell in 1914, the novelist could understand that Philadelphia was as good a subject as the Wild West. Hence the surprise when James Butler uncovered a substantial fragment of a Philadelphia novel, which Wister intended to call Romney. Here, published for the first time, is the complete fragment of Romney together with two of his other unpublished Philadelphia works. Even in its incomplete state -- nearly fifty thousand words -- Romney is Wister's longest piece of fiction after The Virginian and Lady Baltimore. Writing at the express command of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, Wister set Romney in Philadelphia (called Monopolis in the novel) during the 1880s, when, as he saw it, the city was passing from the old to a new order. The hero of the story, Romney, is a man of 'no social position' who nonetheless rises to the top because he has superior ability. It is thus a novel about the possibilities for meaningful social change in a democracy. Although, alas, the story breaks off before the birth of Romney, Wister gives us much to savor in the existing thirteen chapters. We are treated to delightful scenes at the Bryn Mawr train station, the Bellevue Hotel, and Independence Square, which yield brilliant insights into life on the Main Line, the power of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the insidious effects of political corruption. Romney is undoubtedly the best fictional portrayal of 'Gilded Age' Philadelphia, brilliantly capturing Wister's vision of old-money, aristocratic society gasping its last before the onrushing vulgarity of the nouveaux riches. It is a novel of manners that does for Philadelphia what Edith Wharton and John Marquand have done for New York and Boston."</b></font><br><br> Purchase with confidence: all books, gradings, and descriptions are rendered the care of a genuine bibliophile. Satisfaction guaranteed or all costs you've incurred will be promptly refunded. Thanks for your interest in Nooks Of Books. X03-D.. SIGNED. First Edition. Hardcover.