Newly released by the original publisher with new commentary!

The inhabitants of the French Quarter in the 1920s were a curious bunch indeed. Educator and silver artist William Spratling's illustrations of these "famous" people reveal the Quarter's character by focusing on its faces rather than its cafés and balconies. We meet artists, writers, and total strangers, all rendered with specificity and verve. This historic volume was arranged by and features an original foreword from a young William Faulkner, during his years in the Vieux Carré living among artists years before The Sound and the Fury and decades before his Nobel Prize. Spratling was one of these artists, and his illustrations--collected in this, the first book published by the fledging publishing house that became Pelican Publishing Company--serve as humorous gateways into their world. Judith H. Bonner is the author of numerous scholarly articles and catalogs on Southern art and art criticism. Her husband, Dr. Thomas Bonner, Jr., specializes in the study of American and Southern literature, particularly that of William Faulkner, with books and articles on Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Edgar Allan Poe, and other writers.