The Greater Glory

1919

Truby King Collection PS 3531 E32 G73 1919

Boston: Little, Brown, and Company

The frontispiece to William Dudley Pelley’s first novel The Great Glory (1919) evokes a picture of happiness that matches the simple home-town values depicted within. On 29th May 1928, Pelley had a ‘Damascus-like’ experience that altered his life; he became committed to the wellness of the Aryan race. As an extremist, his political ideologies covered every conceivable ‘ism’: anti-Communism, anti-Semitism, racism, extreme patriotism, isolationism, British Israelism - and pyramidology. In 1942 he was charged with high treason, sedition, and called ‘Un-American’. King was in New York about August 1928 and may have purchased Pelley’s book then, delaying his later signing and dating: ‘Karitane Hospital, Melrose, 9. [19]28’.