The Golden Hollow 1913 Rena Carey Sheffield illustration by Earl Stetson Crawford ~ Scarce

Title: The Golden Hollow

Author: Rena Carey Sheffield
Illustrator: frontispiece in colour by Earl Stetson Crawford

Description: Boards in green cloth with gilt lettering on spine and front cover. Minor rubbing at foot of spine and tips of corners. Date written on blank flyleaf at rear, else interior is clean and unmarked. Color frontispiece illustration by Earl Stetson Crawford. Dust jacket is edge-worn and chipped; in an archival mylar sleeve; jacket price of $1.00 printed on spine. 214 pages.

A very scarce copy of a novel that was suppressed at the time of its publication. The author's estranged husband threatened to sue for libel the publisher, distributors and bookstores (including Brentano's, E.P. Dutton & Company, Scribner's, and the Baker & Taylor Company), which resulted in the book being returned to the publisher or left in storage. Justus P. Sheffield claimed that he was libeled by the book's character Mac. Also, interestingly, their two children were said to correspond to the characters of Bruce and Betty. Their legal dispute and pending divorce was covered by the press for several years and articles about it were found in newspapers all across the country.

Rena Carey (Hunt) Sheffield (1874-1948) was also the author of a book of verse, On the Romany Road. In April 1915, she was contacted by the Bohemian Club of San Francisco and notified that her poem ''The Romany Road'' had been set to music and would performed at that summer's festivities at the Bohemian Grove [Newark Evening Star, 17 Apr 1915, p. 6]. She was born at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, lived in Manhattan with her husband, a New York lawyer, and when they separated, relocated to Short Hills, New Jersey. By the 1920's, she had taken up residence at Winter Park, Florida. She was one of the founders of the Allied Arts of Winter Park and was the first secretary of the Florida Poets Society. By the 1930s, she had retired to Southern California.

Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good+
Jacket Condition: Good

Publisher: John Lane Company
Place: New York
Year: 1913