ASBURY, Herbert.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The French Quarter. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Jack Forrest, with highest regards & best wishes for some big fish - Herbert Asbury N.Y. Aug, 28-'44".Asbury was the leading profiler of America's criminal world. This work on New Orleans, tracing crime and vice in the city from colonial days through to the prohibition period, followed his Gem of the Prairie on Chicago, The Barbary Coast on San Francisco, and The Gangs of New York (loosely the basis for the Martin Scorsese film). "Asbury 'skimmed the scum from the history of this fantastic pageant of saints and sinners,' a critic wrote, and produced 'a lusty, bawdy, and Rabelaisian book'" (ANB).The work was first published in 1936 by Alfred A. Knopf; this edition by the reprint company, Garden City Publishing, uses the same plates. There were multiple unstated printings over the years to meet demand - the 1949 Pocket Books edition notes ten by the time of Asbury's inscription.

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