The Mark of Zorro
New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1924. First Edition. The California epic. Fine in the first printing dust jacket without the Grosset and Dunlap logo (“G&D”) on the spine, and with Dec. 1924 ads on the verso. Preceded only by an abridged magazine appearance in 1919, titled The Curse of Capistrano, and the Douglas Fairbanks film, 1920, which left Los Angeles with more cut shirts than a Flashdance revival. The dust jacket has small chips to the corners else it’s near fine, and 1st editions of Zorro in the correct jacket are plenty scarce, and most copies in jacket are in the reprint jacket, and those few that are correct, usually look like they’ve been tortured by Torquemada and then shot by the Death Star. And copies without a jacket are just a submission to hasty expediency. Item #69
Grosset published mostly reprints but not this one. Like many of their books, they did an unillustrated edition and one (as is ours) with illustrations from the 1920 film (photoplay). The evidence at hand submits that both have a 1924 copyright and the text is printed from the same plates, but the ads at the end of our copy, as well as those on the jacket, conform to a 1924 printing while there are no ads in the unillustrated edition and nothing else to corroborate that it was actually issued in 1924. And recalling copies over the years without dustjackets (unreliable but my only subjective data), our edition is notably the scarcer of the two. Reports of a 1920 edition are all bogus and it looks like a later jacket that is sometimes seen picturing Don Diego leaning over a bed on which reclines a senorita.
Every thought is an afterthought but, how do you define super-hero? Achilles at Troy had super powers and commences-up literature in Homer’s Iliad, but he was a demigod. Beowulf was macho enough but he was a mercenary, and Merlin might qualify but magic is on the edge of this radar. For mortal, modern men, Sherlock Holmes, 1887, had surpassing intelligence and focus, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905, (like Robin Hood before him and Zorro after him) was combating an oppressive political regime (if the people are wretched bring them hope), and Tarzan, 1912, could talk to animals and coordinate their actions in support of his efforts. But it is Zorro (the man who always knows what to do next) who contributes 2 critical elements to super-hero fiction completely developed as we now expect to see them, the mild mannered secret identity and the (not to be ignored) costume, anticipating Superman (who adds alien super powers) and Batman (who adds his wonderful toys).
Price:
$5,000.00