On Special Assignment. Being The Further Adventures Of Paul Travers; Showing How He Succeeded As A Newspaper Reporter.

SAMUEL TRAVERS CLOVER

Publication: Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company, 1903,

First edition. 8vo. Pictorial colored cloth, frontispiece, 307 pp., [blank], plus 4 pp. of advertising, introduction, illustrated. Illustrated by H. G. Laskey. The text is in the form of a novel, but is really thinly cloaked fact. Herd 493 says, "Very scarce" and "The author was a reporter sent out by a Chicago paper to cover the Johnson County War. Although written in the form of fiction, the book calls actual names and relates factual incidents as the author witnessed them." Englishman Clover (1859-1934), free-lance newspaperman who worked in Montana and Dakota Territory in the 1890s, "was described as 'a horseback correspondent of the kind brought forth by the Indian wars. He was also the kind of smart reporter who always manages to be there when the story breaks.' After a year in Chicago, he picked up a stockyards rumor about a coming expedition by cattlemen against alleged rustlers in Wyoming and sold his editor on covering the event; thus he became the first outside reporter to attend the Johnson County War, his file remaining a prime and highly readable source on the affair .... He was...the only newspaperman ever known to have been invited by lynchers to witness a lynching'" Additionally there is much of cattle interest and some Indian material. Bookplate removed from front pastedown sheet, former owner's stamped name and University Club stamped ownership label both on front free fly leaf, light wear to the spine ends, corners, and extremities, else very good copy of a difficult title.

Inventory Number: 50622