THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1916. A handsome early reprint of Little, Brown and Company’s separate printing. 8vo, publisher’s original sea-foam green course cloth, lettered and decorated with a pleasing and attractive pictorial decoration of a sailing ship on the upper cover in white and gray, lettered on the spine in white. 60pp. A near fine copy An attractive and appealing vintage edition of one of the most famous novellas in American literature. This short tale was written to inspire patriotism during the Civil War. Although the story is entirely fictitious, there was a real Philip Nolan (the main character in this work), whose true history is the basis for Hale's complementary novelette, PHILIP NOLAN'S FRIENDS.
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY is among the best examples of fiction being used to promote a political cause. “As Hale intended, the short story created significant support for the U.S. as a country, identifying the priority of the Union over the individual states, and thus pressuring readers to view Southern secession negatively. In so doing, he convinced many individuals to join, or at least support the North's effort to, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "preserve the Union." In the story, Hale skillfully convinced many readers that Nolan was an actual figure, thus increasing the story's effectiveness as a piece of patriotic literature.” - John R. Adams.