Rourke, Constance. Davy Crockett. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1962. Book Club Edition. [12178]
Tan hardback with red spine titles, the book is in fine condition. A former owner's 1994 signature in black ink is on the half-title page, but otherwise the book is fine and clean, 256 pages with illustrations by Walter Seaton. Intact original dust jacket is very good with slight fading to the spine panel, now in a clear wrapper. Very good in very good dust-jacket. Hardcover.
First published in 1934.
"This is one of the finest books on America's pioneer days that we have had. Miss Rourke's style is a delight. Whether or not young readers are consciously aware of the vividness of her descriptions and the beauty of her prose, the book cannot help but increase their literary appreciation and their feeling for the way a fine story should be told." - New York Times.
Constance Mayfield Rourke (1885-1941), b. Cleveland, Ohio; d. Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was educated at Vassar College, studied in Europe, and taught English at Vassar College from 1910 to 1915.
"Rourke specialized in American popular culture. She wrote numerous pieces of criticism for magazines like The Nation and The New Republic. However, she made her name as a writer of biographies and biographical sketches of notable American figures, such as John James Audubon, P. T. Barnum, Lotta Crabtree, Davy Crockett, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles Sheeler, as well as books exploring different components of American culture and its history, of which American Humor: A Study of the National Character, first published in 1931, is the most famous...Her work was essential in the formation of the scholarly fields of American studies and American literature." - wikipedia.
"To her, too, the songs and sayings, the ballads, the boasts, and the brashness of farmer, lumberjack, or wandering worker were something worthy of preservation." - obituary in the New York Times, March 25, 1941.
