Nautical Fiction) Stribling, T. S.

The Cruise of the Dry Dock

      Chicago: Reilly and Britton Co, 1917. First Edition. Herbert Morton Stoops dustjacket art and illustrations. Tennessee author's extremely scarce first novel and nautical adventure "where men tackle life and death with bare hands and bare souls...A brave sea story-for Boys and Men. Mystery-Adventure-Action". Described as a potboiler by critics, the World War One set novel is set in the German infested waters of the Sargasso Sea, where the American crew tries to escape capture and certain death by the hands of the evil Huns. Stribling reported later that only 250 copies of the book was printed at his request. The work, despite its questionable literary value, predates the author's more highly regarded serious novels by five years, (which would eventually earn the author the 1933 Pulitzer Prize for Literature). Near Fine bright copy in the impossibly difficult to find original illustrated dustjacket, Good to Very Good with tiny chips to edges, nickel sized chip at lower spine end, top spine end and immediate area of front panel with jagged chip never more than an inch deep.