RED WAGON: THE ROMANCE OF A TRAVELING CIRCUS

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Very Good Plus/Very Good Dust Jacket. 1930. First US Edition. Hard Cover. Lady Eleanor Smith, daughter of Lord Birkenhead, led a remarkable life, which was, quite literally, part of the great English Circus tradition. Author of several books on the circus, she was a friend to Gypsies and circus folk throughout her life; she wandered into circus life and Gypsy camps all over Europe, and went "tenting" with a circus in England, which provided much of the background for her novel RED WAGON. In it she catches the color, the variety and the movement of a traveling circus; its glamour, its risks, the care-free clowning, the smell of stables, the floodlights and crowd, and most of all endless journeying to circus camps, and from town to town across Britain. This is the first US printing, from 1930, of RED WAGON: THE ROMANCE OF A TRAVELING CIRCUS, in the original red cloth binding, as published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, though it comes in the dust jacket from the later printing by Grossett and Dunlap. (We can speculate that at some long ago time a bookstore might have switched to use this Grosset jacket with the Bobbs-Merrill book, as the cover illustration it used is much more colorful and alluring.) The book is in Very Good plus condition, the paper shows some light foxing (darkening from age) but with no markings or writing within - the only flaw being a couple of small dark stain spots to the rear blank endpapers. The colorful dust jacket has small chips and tears at the edges, some age-darkenig, but is still bright, and now protected by a mylar wrapper. It features drawings by "Skrenda" of a circus performer and a circus wagon. A wonderful vintage volume, rare in hardcover and dust jacket; and a good read for circus lovers, which William Allen White at the time, called "a ripping good story". It was the basis for the 1933 film RED WAGON, made at the famous Elstree studios in Britain. which was directed by Paul L. Stein and starred Charles Bickford and Greta Nissen. .