Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Rex Ryan, Midnight Love


Book collector and researcher extraordinaire, Andrew Parry, has found a "lost" Rex Ryan novel, Midnight Love, published by the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co. in the mid-1920s.  The book is listed in Anglo-Eastern advertising, but a copy has not heretofore turned up.  A newspaper report of the mid-1920s indicated that Ryan had written "2 or 3 novels" around this time, but only Tyranny of Virtue, written under the pseudonym, Noel Despard, was known with any certainty.  In the 1930s Ryan began to publish thriller novels as R.R. Ryan.

While it's always dangerous to tell a book by its cover, the image of a young woman in an opium den appears to reflect the plots of Rex Ryan's alter ego, Dennis Clyde's early plays.  Andrew will provide a synopsis in the coming weeks which may tell us one way or the other.  Well done, Andrew, on a great find!

Also shown above is a Louise Heilgers novel published by the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Co. first published by Stephen Swift and Co. in 1912.

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