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Erle Stanley Gardner
Details
The Case of the Velvet Claws
Erle Stanley Gardner
GARDNER, Erle Stanley (1889-1970). The Case of the Velvet Claws. New York: William Morrow, 1933.
Rare presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed by the author: ‘To Adolph G. Sutro with compliments & best wishes of Erle Stanley Gardner February 1933. All of which means I hope you like this yarn, dealing as it does with a lawyer who gets results and a snooty bitch, both characters being true to life’. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. Sutro (1891-1981) was a close friend of Gardner and the grandson of the first Adolph Sutro, a wealthy German-American engineer and the mayor of San Francisco in 1894. Gardner was often a guest aboard the younger Sutro’s yacht, the Spray, and the two undertook a voyage from San Francisco to Alaska, which would later become the basis for Gardner’s short story Beyond the Limit (Sunset magazine, 1925). The inscription within this copy detailing ‘a lawyer who gets results’ is a reference to Gardner himself who was a practising trial lawyer at the time of The Case of the Velvet Claws’ publication. We can trace just one other presentation copy in auction records.
Octavo. (Minor offsetting to endpapers.) Original black cloth, upper cover and spine lettered in red, top edge stained red (lacking dust-jacket, corners lightly bumped and spine lightly rubbed and faded); housed in modern black half morocco clamshell box, spine lettered in gilt. Provenance: Adolph G. Sutro (1891-1981; authorial presentation inscription, dated February 1933, ownership stamp to front pastedown).
Erle Stanley Gardner
GARDNER, Erle Stanley (1889-1970). The Case of the Velvet Claws. New York: William Morrow, 1933.
Rare presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed by the author: ‘To Adolph G. Sutro with compliments & best wishes of Erle Stanley Gardner February 1933. All of which means I hope you like this yarn, dealing as it does with a lawyer who gets results and a snooty bitch, both characters being true to life’. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. Sutro (1891-1981) was a close friend of Gardner and the grandson of the first Adolph Sutro, a wealthy German-American engineer and the mayor of San Francisco in 1894. Gardner was often a guest aboard the younger Sutro’s yacht, the Spray, and the two undertook a voyage from San Francisco to Alaska, which would later become the basis for Gardner’s short story Beyond the Limit (Sunset magazine, 1925). The inscription within this copy detailing ‘a lawyer who gets results’ is a reference to Gardner himself who was a practising trial lawyer at the time of The Case of the Velvet Claws’ publication. We can trace just one other presentation copy in auction records.
Octavo. (Minor offsetting to endpapers.) Original black cloth, upper cover and spine lettered in red, top edge stained red (lacking dust-jacket, corners lightly bumped and spine lightly rubbed and faded); housed in modern black half morocco clamshell box, spine lettered in gilt. Provenance: Adolph G. Sutro (1891-1981; authorial presentation inscription, dated February 1933, ownership stamp to front pastedown).
