My Autobiography
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, [1914]. First printing. Hardcover. Hardcover, lacking the jacket. The book is in fine condition, clean, square, tight. Bound in red cloth with gilt lettering on spine; front board lettered in gilt with a pasted-on paper illustration, also in fine shape. The first issue, with "September, 1914" on the verso of the title page and 28 lines on page 239. All 32 llustrations in fine condition. Item #865
In a note preceding the main text of the autobiography, McClure says, "I am indebted to the cooperation of Miss Willa Sibert Cather for the very existence of this book." In fact, Cather actually was a ghostwriter; in Cather's own copy of the book, now in the Cather collection at the University of Nebraska, McClure acknowledged the arrangement with his handwritten inscription, "With affectionate regards for the real author." McClure's story is of his experiences as a boy in Ireland, immigration to the United States, and the founding of the early muckraking political and literary publication McClure's Magazine.
Price: $175.00