Lone Cowboy: My Life Story by JAMES, Will - 1930

With an Exceptional Original Drawing by James JAMES, Will. Lone Cowboy: My Life Story. Illustrated by the Author. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930. First edition. One of 250 copies with an original James drawing bound in on thicker stock. The drawing in this copy is of a cowboy riding a running horse. The drawing is nearly half the page and has exceptional detail. The drawing is signed and dated in the lower right corner. Octavo (8 3/16 x 5 3/4 inches; 208 x 145 mm). [i]-xii, 431, [5] pp. With photographic frontispiece portrait, two facsimile letters, thirty-five full page James illustrations (included in the pagination) and numerous small drawings. Original smooth and shiny green cloth with a brown cloth spine. Original brown morocco spine label, lettered in gilt. Fore-edge uncut. Front inner hinge just barely starting. In green cloth slipcase with brown paper spine label. Overall, an excellent, about fine copy with a wonderful drawing. "[Will James, a] western author and artist, was born Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault in St. Nazaire de Acton, Quebec, Canada, the son of Jean Dufault and Josephine (maiden name unknown). When the Dufault family moved to Montreal, he attended a Catholic school and his father ran a hotel, in which the boy heard stories of trappers that he later used to fabricate parts of his Lone Cowboy: My Life Story...Lone Cowboy, his partly faked autobiography, hoodwinked the vast American buying public, and even his wife, and was a 1930 selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. (Its dishonesty was not exposed until 1967.) Although he wrote eighteen more books, James slowly lost his self-assurance, sense of well-being, and artistic inspiration. He constantly feared being found out as a prevaricating autobiographer." (American National Biography). Howes. Streeter. HBS 67870. $4,500