A Gent from Bear Creek

Fix-up novel of 13 related stories, all but three were first published in Action Stories from March 1934 to August 1935. The stories were slightly revised by Howard, and are presented as chapters of the novel, retaining their original titles.

• 2 Mountain Man
• 3 Meet Cap'n Kidd
• 4 Guns of the Mountains
• 5 A Gent from Bear Creek
• 6 The Feud Buster
• 7 The Road to Bear Creek
• 8 The Scalp Hunter
• 9 Cupid from Bear Creek
• 10 The Haunted Mountain
• 11 Educate or Bust
• 12 War on Bear Creek

According to Danny Street, a Britisher who investigated the Jenkins "Gent" history at length, a first edition printing for such a book would have been as low as 600 copies, given the unknown status of the author and Jenkins' standard procedures. Jenkins usually sold most of the print run of their books to the UK's lending libraries, meaning that the dust jacket was immediately cast away, and the book lent to dozens of readers in the course of a year. This explains why most surviving copies are in very poor shape and have ex-library stamps.
There are 11 known copies of this book in private hands worldwide as of 2018-03-03. Eight of those are in poor shape. The ninth copy is in "acceptable" condition and the tenth copy is in "very good" condition. The eleventh and last one once famously belonged to August Derleth, then to Glenn Lord, and now belongs to Patrice Louinet. That copy is also in "very good" condition, and is the only copy still in its original dust jacket.
There are seven other copies, 5 in British libraries, one in the Ranger, Texas Junior College library and one in the Robert E. Howard House and Museum. The only library copy with a dust jacket is that in the Cambridge University Library.
For additional information, see The Holy Gent by Lee Breakiron in The Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter, Fall-Winter 2016, p. 25.
Original dust jackets for this version and the lower-cost version of this publication are both in the collection of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
Jacket art is from a facsimile copy.