[Carbon Typescript Draft of:] THE QUICKSANDS

[New York & Brooklyn], [nd. but likely not later than 1907].. [2],251 leaves. Quarto. Closely typed double-spaced (with stretches of single-spaced) carbon typescript, on rectos only, with a small handful of corrections in ink. Bradbound in worn faux-leather over boards binder. Pastedowns of binder chipped and partially detached, typescript generally in very good order. A typescript of this unpublished collaborative novel cowritten by the pioneering female war journalist and suffragette and her socialist husband. Hamm (1867-1907) went to Cuba and Puerto Rico to cover the Spanish-American war. She also volunteered as a nurse for the Cuban national guard. Based on these experiences, Hamm wrote a number of books and articles about the war and its political consequences, as well as books examining the New York and American moneyed classes. She died of pneumonia at the age of 40. McMahon (1875 - 1956) met Hamm in the course of his own work as a war correspondent and they married days after Hamm's divorce from her first husband was finalized. McMahon wrote TOILERS AND IDLERS (New York: Wilshire, 1907), a novel which is cited by Rideout, Blake and Hanna. Apart from that novel, he is best known for his controversial biography of the Wright Brothers (1930), and OCLC credits him with several titles on agricultural and home economics topics. He is known to have written at least one other unpublished novel and a number of plays, as well as sketches and plays about the American military presence in the Philippines before the turn of the century. This rather sprawling work is set among the New York upper class, and among other themes touches on the issue of alcoholism. The authors' residence is noted in ink on the title-leaf ("8 East 109th St., N.Y. City") beneath which appears, in pencil, "792 President Street Brooklyn." There is a draft of the present work in the McMahon papers at Stanford.