Steven desJardins (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stevendj) wrote,@ 2008-03-05 02:14:00 |
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Unexpected Discoveries
I'm almost finished with a novel for Project Gutenberg, a juvenile pulp paperback called A Prisoner of Morro written during the Spanish-American War, set in the Spanish-American War. I think this is one of the ones I picked up for a few dollars at World Fantasy Convention, when one of the dealers started heavily discounting some of his stock.
Today I started poking around on the web to see what I could find out about the author, Ensign Clark Fitch, U. S. N. What I found was that this was part of a series of books a young author wrote under a pseudonym, a few years before he began publishing under his own name: Upton Sinclair.
I think it's important to preserve cheap pulp paperbacks, to preserve a large sample of the popular literature of previous eras before it vanishes forever. It feels odd—and good—to discover that one of these books is more significant than I suspected.
(It is, incidentally, not a good novel, but he was sixteen years old when he wrote it, and was writing at the rate of fifty-six thousand words a week.)
I'm almost finished with a novel for Project Gutenberg, a juvenile pulp paperback called A Prisoner of Morro written during the Spanish-American War, set in the Spanish-American War. I think this is one of the ones I picked up for a few dollars at World Fantasy Convention, when one of the dealers started heavily discounting some of his stock.
Today I started poking around on the web to see what I could find out about the author, Ensign Clark Fitch, U. S. N. What I found was that this was part of a series of books a young author wrote under a pseudonym, a few years before he began publishing under his own name: Upton Sinclair.
I think it's important to preserve cheap pulp paperbacks, to preserve a large sample of the popular literature of previous eras before it vanishes forever. It feels odd—and good—to discover that one of these books is more significant than I suspected.
(It is, incidentally, not a good novel, but he was sixteen years old when he wrote it, and was writing at the rate of fifty-six thousand words a week.)
