Taps at Reveille

New York: Scribners, 1935. First Edition; first printing; second state (correcting misprints); covers spotted; some cloth wear; half of rear free endpaper torn out; just a good copy in a supplied very good dust jacket with the price stamped on the front flap in the smaller of the two sizes (no priority is established); in a custom clamshell box. Presentation copy, humorously and, very possibly, drunkenly inscribed by the author, “For Shirley Chidsey, These tales of our life in Tahiti and the Maori Jungle From her friend F. Scott (’Nordoff[sic]-and-Hall’). Jan 1st 1899.” The recipient was the wife of novelist Donald Barr Chidsey, some of whose work was set in the South Seas. Shirley Chidsey (later Bridgwater) worked in publishing her entire career, and lived in Tahiti for three years, working closely with the authors while editing Nordhoff and Hall’s Bounty Trilogy. For the most part, the authors wrote alternating chapters, making the work of an editor especially vital in compiling a consistent and coherent narrative. This unsung contribution must have been time consuming. The first novel, Mutiny on the Bounty, was issued in 1932; the Charles Laughton - Clark Gable film, based on this version of events, came to the screen in 1935.