MAMMONART: An Essay in Economic Interpretation. (Inscribed and signed by the author to Al Jennings).

Pasadena: Published by the Author", (February, 1925). First edition . Hardcover. Spiine moderately faded, lower right corner of front cover bleached, . vi, 390 pp., advert leaf at rear, small octavo, original red cloth with title embossed in black on front cover and gilt on spine.

A book of literary, artistic and cultural criticism from a Socialist perspective. Sinclair's subjects range from the Greek and Roman classics to Milton, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Swift, Jane Austen, Coleridge, Keats, Ruskin, William Morris, Richard Wagner, Tolstoi, and on to Mark Twain, Jack London, and O. Henry, to name but a few. This copy inscribed to attorney turned train robber turned silent film star Alphonso "Al" Jennings (1863-1961). Jennings figures in the text of Chapter CVII "Bagdad-on-the-Subway" in which the story of William Henry Porter (O. Henry, 1862-1910) is told. Porter and Jennings had met and (according to Jennings) become friends in Honduras in 1897 when both were on the lam - Jennings was wanted for train robbery and Porter for embezzlement. Porter was caught the following year and sentenced to 5 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Coincidentally, Jennings was also serving time in the same prison and they there renewed their friendship. All of this is recounted by Sinclair in brief in "Mamonart" and in another self-published 1925 publication "Bill Porter: A Drama of O. Henry in Prison." In the introduction to that book, Sinclair credits Al Jennings as his primary source. Jennings himself wrote 4 books, 2 of which are about his friendship with O. Henry.