William Bolitho (1891-1930) South African, First Edition of Twelve Against the Gods. This book is titled Twelve Against the Gods, written by William Bolitho and it’s a first edition published by The Press Of The Readers Club in 1941. 

Size: 8 5/8 X 5 3/4 in. 

#6489 . 

William Bolitho Ryall (1891 - 1930) was a South African journalist, writer, and biographer who was a friend of other prominent writers like Hemingway and Walter Lippmann, and he died young, from a burst appendix that was misdiagnosed by the doctor. He wrote under the name William Bolitho, and friends called him Bill Ryall. 

The book was written in a racy, journalistic style that covered the lives of twelve individuals from history, such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon, and their lives were all different, but they were all adventurers who defied convention to achieve fame and notoriety, and this turned out to be Elon Musk’s favorite book. 

The book was originally published by Simon and Schuster in 1929, and this is a first edition by the Press of the Readers Club and the second book ever published in the Readers Club series. 

The Readers Club Press was primarily associated with the publishing house of George Macy, who launched the Readers Club in the early 1940’s, to get these classic titles out to the public at an affordable price. He believed they were worthy titles, but didn’t receive enough attention, and they were selected by a board of literary judges, including Sinclair Lewis, Carl Van Doren, and Alexander Woollcott. Books were bought by subscription for a $1 each (if you bought six titles), or for $1.50 if you bought them in a store, and indeed the book here has “$1.50 at all bookshops” on the flaps of the dust jacket. 

The Readers Club books often had recognizable dust jackets featuring a picture of a couple reading under a tree, and indeed that image is on the front cover of the book, the dust jacket and title page. 

The book is covered in a beige cloth, with blank endpapers, a half-title, the title page, which says the book has a foreword by Alexander Woollcott, it was published in New York by the Press of the Readers Club, the copyright page says it was first published in 1929 by Simon and Schuster and the Readers Club obtained special permission to print the contents of this book, which is dated 1941 on the copyright page. Woollcott’s Foreword is four pages long (viii - x), one page of Contents (xi), an Author’s Introduction (xiii - xxi), the text is 356 pages long, and it comes with the dust jacket, which is not price-clipped. 

The book measures 8 5/8 x 5 3/4 inches long and is in very good condition, with a tight binding and mostly clean pages and text - there are brown spots on the first page of the chapter about Alexander the Great and that’s it - and the endpapers have shadows from the flaps of the dust jacket, light wear at the heel and crown and light browning on the spine, the dust jacket has small chips at the heel and crown and one tip, and overall a solid copy of this book by William Bolitho. 

Prices range from $45 for a copy without a dust jacket up to $500 for a copy with the dust jacket.