There Shall Be No Light

First edition, with Scribner A on copyright page. Inscribed "For Charles Sanderson, with every good wish - Robert Sherwood November, 1940." We believe this Charles Sanderson was chief librarian of the Toronto Public Library from 1937 to 1956. This copy - which was bought in Ottawa, Ontario, at an annual book sale in the village of Rockcliffe - was probably acquired when, after running for six months to packed houses in New York, Sherwood took the play on the road in November across the U.S. and into Canada (The play ran until Nov. 2 in New York, so it's possible Sanderson could have got it there, as well). Upon seeing the play in Canada, Prime Minister MacKenzie King said it encouraged him to speak candidly to Americans about the coming war. Sherwood himself was no stranger to Canada. After being rejected for enlistment in the U.S. forces in the First World War, he travelled to Montreal and became a private in the 42nd Battalion, Black Watch, in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France, where he was injured in the fighting. And in 1940, just as this Pulitzer Prize-winning play was about to be staged, he made an address to Canadians via the CBC called Let's Face The Facts, which outlined the threat that Hitler and the Nazis posed to the world. Further, all of the money he made from the production of this play in Canada was donated to the Canadian war effort. This play led to a friendship and close relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sherwood campaigned and wrote speeches for FDR, and then, during the Second World War, served as director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information where he created the Voice of America radio network. The book is near fine. The dust jacket, which is not price clipped, is close to very good, with a chip at the top front right corner, above the first L of Shall; a chip and edge wear to the top of the spine; edge wear and chipping to the tips; and a chip missing from the bottom third of the spine that doesn't affect either the author's or publisher's name. Protected in a Brodart cover.