THE BRANDING IRON.

Boston:: Houghton Mifflin,, 1919.. Hardcover first edition -. Near fine in olive green cloth with red lettering. . First printing. Illustrated with 5 glossy plates by Charles Sarka. The author's first novel, a romance set against the backdrop of the remote Wyoming ranch country, one with the horror of a young woman being literally branded by a husband blinded by jealousy. Basis for the 1920 silent movie of the same name, filmed by Goldwyn Pictures with Reginald Barker as director. Born in New York, Katharine married Maxwell Struthers Burt in 1903,and after his graduation from Princeton in 1904, they moved to the Teton Valley of western Wyoming. In 1908, Maxwell Burt founded the Bar BC ranch near Jackson Hole, and this became their home. In 1920, Katharine became the first writer from Wyoming to go to Hollywood when she was invited by Samuel Goldwyn to work on the screenplay for her novel. At the MGM studios, she wrote in the company of Gertrude Atherton and Mary Roberts Rinehart. Maxwell Struthers Burt was a prize-winning short story writer and novelist (author of the classic "Powder River" in 1938), and he also was a screenwriter. Katharine Burt went on to write young adult novels and mysteries, served as fiction editor for the Ladies Home Journal, and the last novel in her long career, "The Silver Spur" was published in 1968.