A Treasury of Damon Runyon~1958~Modern Library~Very Good Condition~Hardback~Free Shipping

A Treasury of Damon Runyon~1958~Modern Library~Very Good Condition~Hardback~Free Shipping.

Great copy of this Modern Library classic. No markings or inscriptions. Slight separations on title page and last page (see photos).


Alfred Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880 – December 10, 1946) was an American newspaperman and short-story writer.

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a “Damon Runyon character” evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective “Runyonesque” refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous and sentimental tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by “square” names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as “Nathan Detroit”, “Benny Southstreet”, “Big Jule”, “Harry the Horse”, “Good Time Charley”, “Dave the Dude”, or “The Seldom Seen Kid”. His distinctive vernacular style is known as “Runyonese”: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase “Hooray Henry”, a term now used in British English to describe the upper class version of a loud-mouthed, arrogant twit. From Wikipedia

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