BRANN AND THE ICONOCLAST.
By Charles Carver. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1957.
 
Biography & Autobiography
Vintage from the 1950s
 
William Cowper Brann (1855–1898) was an American journalist known as Brann the Iconoclast and famous for the articulate savagery of his writing.
 
"They wouldn't let him rest—even in his grave." Thus Charles Carver opens his story of the climactic years of a journalist who had poured out such blazing prose that readers from England to Hawaii mourned his murder.
 
The impact of William Cowper Brann's Iconoclast upon the town of Waco, Texas, in the 1890's was like a rocket burst in a quiet sky. Rebelling against Victorian hypocrisy, the newspaperman took aim at organized virtue, exemplified for him by Baylor University and other Baptist organizations.
 
Dr. Roy Bedichek, noted author and naturalist, knew Brann, and after reading this book in manuscript said, "I am at once delighted and disappointed: disappointed to find my teen-age hero reduced to size... delighted with the art of the biographer.... It has genuine literary excellence... is a chapter in the history of the publishing business in Texas that needs to be put into print...."
 
Owner name scribbled over in pencil at front endpaper with 1957 date. Rear endpaper removed with gutter bindery webbing lightly showing otherwise a secure binding with clean pages. Includes price-clipped jacket with a protective cover (lightly rippled with a few small tears/chips). 196 pages. Illustrated hardcover book with dust jacket.