Books

First edition in English, first impression, this copy with the publisher's compliments slip tipped-in to the front pastedown and with a typescript note added from the translator in the month of publication: "with Mr. Basil Creighton's Compliments 21.9.34". This book was originally published as Der Schatz der Sierra Madre in 1927. Creighton (1886-1989) translated a number of Traven's works and many significant works of German literature into English, including Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, Alma Mahler's Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters, and Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel. Traven "is probably the most mysterious and baffling of all modern writers: a man who has seemingly courted obscurity as another might court fame and notoriety, courted oblivion with an almost pathological intensity" (Hagemann, p. 37). Octavo. Original dark orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge orange, bottom edge untrimmed. With dust jacket by John D. Evans. Spine cocked, trivial bumps to edges, slight wear to lower edges, contents lightly foxed; jacket a touch soiled and foxed, spine panel toned, a few chips and short closed tears, edges rubbed, unclipped: a near-fine copy in very good jacket. Hagemann 53.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a novel by B. Traven, originally published in 1927, which tells the story of three down-and-out men who, seeking gold, face both perils and moral dilemmas in the Sierra Madre mountains.