Hal Ellson First Edition 1949 Duke Harlem Gang Juvenile Delinquent Novel HC w/DJ

Up For Sale Today is

Duke

by

Hal Ellson

Hardcover. 8vo. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 1949.  ix, 170 pgs. First Edition/First Printing (A present). 

H Lawrence Hoffman DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in  cloth with titles present to the spine. Boards lightly rubbed and worn. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid.

The author's first book, a "juvenile delinquent" novel about a 15-year-old Harlem gang leader, the first of several works by Ellson about similar themes. Includes a "Partial Glossary of Gang Terminology" most of which are variants of terms for girls, marijuana, police, and homosexuals.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Harold "Hal" Ellson (1910 – October 31, 1994 in Brooklyn) was an American author of pulp fiction whose work primarily focused on juvenile delinquency, a field in which he has been described as "one of the most popular" writers and as "legendary"

Ellson was a social worker, recreational therapist, and nurse's aide at Bellevue Hospital, where he encountered the adolescent psychiatric patients on whom he based much of his fiction; he subsequently stated that many of the patients viewed him as a "father confessor", and eagerly told him their stories while trusting that he would not report them to law enforcement. As a result, Nelson Algren described Ellson's work as "just straight case studies."

Frederic Wertham was an aficionado of Ellson's work, favorably reviewing Ellson's 1949 novel "Duke" in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, and providing an introduction to Ellson's 1950 novel Tomboy; as well, Wertham subsequently cited Tomboy in the first chapter of his own 1954 Seduction of the Innocent.

Harlan Ellison cites Ellson's work as having inspired his own interest in juvenile delinquency — an interest which led directly to the writing of Ellison's first novel, Web of the City. Ellison has also stated that in the earliest days of his career as a writer, he was often mistaken for Ellson writing under a pseudonym — and that decades later, when Ellison had become much more known and Ellson's career had waned, Ellson was often mistaken for Ellison writing under a pseudonym.