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THE GLASS KEY
by DASHIELL HAMMETT
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
PASADENA, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
A near fine first edition in very good dust jacket. Owned by Charlie Watts, ROLLING STONE drummer. With contemporay custom
Paramount purchased the film rights prior to its release for a reported $25,000, and the film studio ultimately produced two studio length features adapted from the novel: the first in 1935 starring George Raft, Edward Arnold, and Claire Dodd; the second in 1942, capitalising on the success of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, and starring Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, and Alan Ladd.
Synopsis
Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter—messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett’s later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story “Tulip,” which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the “Op,” a nameless detective (or “operative”) who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold—a bit like Hammett himself.
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Details
- Bookseller
- VAGABOND BOOKS
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- cw 1
- Title
- THE GLASS KEY
- Author
- DASHIELL HAMMETT
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- KNOPF
- Place of Publication
- NEW YORK
- Date Published
- 1931
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
Terms of Sale
VAGABOND BOOKS
CWO. returns accepted within 7 days in same condition.
About the Seller
VAGABOND BOOKS
Biblio member since 2009
PASADENA, California
About VAGABOND BOOKS
We are an out of print bookstore. We are celebrating our 45th year in the out of print/antiquarian book business. Please search or browse our inventory of hard to find, out of print, used, and rare books. If you can't find what you like please call us at 310 936-5249We have over 50,000 books on subjects ranging from FIRST EDITIONS, ART, MYSTERIES, POETRY, MUSIC, SCIENCE FICTION, LITERATURE AND LITERARY CRITICISM TO MILITARY HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND GENERAL HISTORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY. We are members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Association and the International Booksellers Association. We have been in business since 1975.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
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