The Barbary Coast Signed by Herbert Asbury first edition 1933
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933
8vo., black cloth-backed pictorial boards, printed with a bar and brawl scene in burnt orange; spine lettered and decorative with theatre devices in matching orange; upper edge stained orange, else untrimmed; in the pictorial black and red dustwrapper (clipped); pp. [xvii], 4-319, [i], i-xi [index], [iii]; with many of the final pages totally unopened; frontis photograph, title vignette of a couple smoking opium pipes; a further 20 captioned plates throughout text; light compression to spine tips; outer edges and prelims spotted; a very good copy, otherwise, in the like dustwrapper which has some overall toning, sunning to spine, patches of rubbing, and some closed tears (the longest 2cm, to the upper panel); with a small tear to the same, repaired here, and in other places, to the verso with tape.
First US edition, stated, of this non-fiction work about the birth of the San Francisco crime scene, from the author of ‘Gangs of New York’. Inscribed by the author to the New York politician Eberley Hutchinson “To my good friend” and dated in the year of publication.
Beginning with the Gold Rush to California in 1849, Asbury traces the development of a city from a sleepy port into a bustling metropolis, caused by an influx of treasure-seekers. The subsequent pop-ups of gambling dens, criminal districts, opium parlours and peep-shows, “the cribs, the concert saloons, the houses of prostitution, and the murderers, shanghaiers, dive-keepers, politicians and courtesans” caused by the swiftly inflated population, led to a huge among of crime, violence and underhand activities and details, and this book, as the dustwrapper states, is the “record of iniquity on the grand scale”.
Published in 1933 just as a modern San Francisco began to take shape, the book combines historical facts with anecdotal quips about such characters as Dirty Tom McAlear (who hadn’t had a bath in ten years), and the activities of the Shanghai sailors arriving on new ships into the port. Asbury made a career from writing books on the subject of human depravity in American cities, and wrote similar histories set within New Orleans and Chicago, as well as an interesting history of firefighting within New York City.
Eberley Hutchinson was an American politician who was a mining engineer before entering the New York Assembly in 1919, where he served as a member until 1931. An interesting presentation copy, scarce signed.