Cobb, Humphrey:

$650 · Offered by William Reese Company

[Typed Letter, Signed, Accompanied by a Partial Typescript of:] A PROMINENT PLACE. Novelist Humphrey Cobb, author of PATHS OF GLORY, writes novelist Ralph Bates, in the latter's capacity as fund-raiser for National Sharecroppers Week, forwarding the accompanying manuscript for a fundraiser. The Week was a predecessor of the National Sharecroppers Union, which was founded in aid of the Southern Tenant Farmer's Union. The Union was a client of the Oram Group, of which Bates's wife, Eva, was a principal. Cobb writes: "Indeed I remember you very well... a little over a year ago I wrote you a letter of admiration for the honesty of your 'Disaster in Finland' article in the New Republic. Sorry about the mss. The enclosed is the only one I've got. I typed it myself, and as I'm a terribly old maid about clean pages... it bears practically none of those interlineations so cherished by collectors. Obviously, the fact that I've got the ms. shows that it never got published. Still, if it brings in a dime, that's better than no dime...." The letter is signed in full. The typescript is entitled 'A Prominent Place,' is dated 14 August 1940, and bears a count of 2,000 words. It is incomplete, and terminates mid-sentence at the bottom of the fifth page. A short story, "A Prominent Place" relates to political tensions among the multi-national members of a crew of an Italian ocean freighter in response to an order to mount a plaque of Mussolini in a "prominent place." After publication of his 1

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