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Presentation copy, inscribed to noted bibliophile F[rederick] W. Skiff, and signed by the author on the title page. Also with the bookplate of Skiff on the front pastedown. The title page contains no copyright information on verso. With an "FS" publisher's logo in yellow on rear cover, and "Shay" between two rules at spine heel. Shay, a good friend of Theodore Dreiser, was all set to publish a new edition of Sister Carrie when he was drafted in 1917. While appealing his conscription, he introduced Dreiser to Horace Liveright, and this led to the publication of the Boni & Liveright 1917 edition, thus beginning Dreiser's long relationship with Boni & Liveright. This Frank Shay edition was never mass-produced, and is very rare. According to two pencil notes, one on each of the front endpapers, it is one of only five copies in existence (one of those pencil notes is partially obscured by the bookplate). Only 1 copy located by OCLC / Worldcat, located at UCLA and according to their notes, that copy contains a penciled note on fly leaf that states one of six copies published by Frank Shay. The history of the publication is as follows: The first edition was in 1900 by Doubleday, Page. In 1906 Dreiser personally bought the plates from Doubleday, Page, and made changes on page 5, lines 3-22. Then Dodge published an edition of around 500 copies in 1907, and Grosset & Dunlap published a very small printing after that of maybe only 100-200 copies, and Harper in 1912, another small printing, then Shay printed this edition in 1917, but they ran into a snag there, which is why the pencil note on our copy says only 5 were issued, and then it was turned over to Boni & Liveright who came out with another edition in 1917. PBA thanks John Martin, former publisher of Black Sparrow Press for his help with this description. Martin thinks that all these editions may have been made up of sheets from the 1912 Harper edition since our Shay title page is a tipped in cancel. John Martin states that during his five decades of collecting Dreiser, he never saw the G&D edition, the Harper edition, nor this Shay edition. For more information about the publishing activities of Frank Shay, please visit the website of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin: http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/bookshopdoor/theshop.cfm