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American novelist and playwright (1884-1933) best known for creating the fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Seven items signed either as “Earl Derr Biggers,” “Earl Biggers,” or “E.D.B,” consisting of four TLSs, two ALS, and a vintage matte-finish 3 x 7.25 clipped portrait photo. The letters, dated from 1923 to 1932, range in size from 3.5 x 5.5 to 8.5 x 13, with three of the TLSs on his personal letterhead and four of the letters addressed to fellow playwright, author, and Harvard University alum Jules Eckert Goodman. Sampled sections from a few of the letters are as follows:
June 3, 1929: “Thank you very much for your letter about ‘The Black Camel.’ I am delighted that you like it so much, and hope the final instalments do not disappoint you. I have heard many legends about my stories, but your note carried the first intimation that the Aspinwall Hotel was the scene of ‘Seven Keys to Baldpate.’ I never heard of this hotel or saw it until several years after ‘Baldpate’ was written.”
May 2, 1932: “I have just completed a new Chan novel after a period of pain and stress that began on the first day of last December, and am in my usual spell of depression and inertia that follows each book. The mystery story does not rank at the top as literature, but the amount of concentration and good hard labor that goes into the writing of a complicated mystery plot is something that writers in no other field experience.”
May 27, 1932: “I say painfully struggling because, as you may have heard from other sources, I have been very ill for nearly two years. I believe that when you left here I was just about to begin the writing of ‘Charlie Chan Carries On.’ I finished that in June, 1930, with the blood pressure running a nice 275…In October of that year a certain mutual friend of ours pulled a stunt that turned my hair gray in a night, and early in November I had a heart attack that brought me so close to the pearly gates I could touch the hem of St. Peter's robe. I was in bed for months. In the spring I tried to begin a new novel, and had another attack that made the outlook seem pretty dark and dreary. After a summer in Honolulu I recovered enough to be able finally to begin a new novel last December. It was a terrific strain and took me twice as long to write it as I had ever been forced to spend on any book before. This new one, ‘Keeper of the Keys,’ starts in the Post in a couple of weeks. Most of those who have read it say it is the best Chan yet, which is a bit of light through the clouds. And of course, we'll sell a million copies, times being what they are.” In overall fine condition.
