Hammett, Dashiell

8vo. Title-page vignette in green of a broken key. Original pale green cloth, stamped in dark green and red; spine faded, top of spine fraying and with a small repair, heel a bit worn, sides a trifle soiled. Later pictorial dust jacket (featuring a photograph of a frightened Clara Bow framed by handcuffs) with blurbs regarding the book (by Woollcott, Parker, and F.P.A.) on the front flap, the jacket identical with that for the first printing except for the flaps; worn at edges and front flap hinge.

Layman A4.2.a

first American edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front free endpaper: “For Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels with best regards — Dashiell Hammett, Hollywood, August, 1931.” Ben Lyon (1901-1979) and his wife Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) were famous movie actors of the day: their careers stretching from the early silent era to the TV series Life with the Lyons in the mid-1950s. Daniels starred in the well received 1931 film version of The Maltese Falcon, playing the role of Ruth Wonderly. After serialization in Black Mask, March to June, 1930, Hammett’s favorite among his novels was first issued in book form in London in January 1931; this first American edition was published in April.

“The Glass Key spins a more ambitious and unusual web whose threads are male friendship, male loyalty and male betrayal, and considers the ultimate treachery — the murder of a son by his father... In Ned Beaumont — principled, forlorn, afflicted with an uneasy worldliness and the ability to understand the meaner motives and ambitions of friends, and tubercular — Hammett produced his nearest self-portrait” (Diane Johnson, Dashiell Hammett: A Life, 1987, pp. 86-7).