With an Introduction by Alistair Cooke

WILLIAM MARCH

with an introduction by Alistair Cooke

A new collection by the author of The Bad S66d 一 “the unrec- ognized genius of our time’’一 including the complete novel, COMPANY K, a roundup of delightful FABLES, twenty-one of March’s best STORIES, and the novelette, OCTOBER ISLAND• WILLIAM MARCH OMNIBUS *

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

ALISTAIR COOKE

RINEHART 85 COMPANY New York • Toronto Published simultaneously in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company, Ltd., Toronto ® Introduction, ◎ 1956 by Rinehart & Company, Inc. Copyright, 1929, 1930, 1931，1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938，1939，1940，1943, 1944，1945，1946, by William March Copyright, 1941, 1942, 1956 by The Merchants National Bank of Mobile, Mobile, Alabama Copyright, 1940, by New York Post, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-5630 Introduction to William March

BY ALISTAIR COOKE

W illiam March Campbell, an organizer and later vice-president of the Waterman Steamship Corporation, was born in Mobile, Alabama, on the eighteenth of September, 1893. William March, the writer, was born sometime after that, not in fact until he was in his middle thirties, when a long attack of hysterical blindness left him at the mercy of what he discovered to be a wry and melancholy imagination. He recalled over and over again the men and the exploits of his own company of Marines in the First World War. When he regained his sight, he wrote Company K, and thereafter his preoccupation with human char- acter, and what he could do with it on paper, gradually ab- sorbed him, so that about ten years later he shed his active interest in the shipping business. It gave him, however, a com- fortable income. No one knew quite how much until, after his death in May, 1954, his collection of paintings, including enough Soutines to furnish an asylum, was valued at a quarter of a million dollars. The picture that these few sentences evoke may well be that of a successful tycoon with a dilettante itch for writing. Nothing could be less like the familiar image of this small, gray, bemused bachelor. The modeling of his big head, and a handsome aquiline nose, were the only remarkable things about his appearance. Met on a street or coming into a room, he could have passed any- where as a small-business man resigned to frequent losses, a dry- goods salesman perhaps, not unlike the man on the train in He had the soft pale skin of a Southerner ״.The Little Wife ״

V Rhoda, whom The New Yorker called a ‘‘baby Gorgon" and who is pictured at the left, was the last of a quite remarkable gallery of characters created by William March, for the author regrettably died at his New Orleans home less than a month after publication of THE BAD SEED. Ironically enough, his last work was the first in many years to receive wide attention from the public, both as a novel and a Broadway play (soon to be a movie), though a small band of hardy critics had long recognized his unique talents. William March was born William March Campbell in Mobile. Alabama, in 1 893, second in a family of eleven children. He briefly attended the University of Valparaiso (Indiana) and studied law for a time at Alabama State University, but when World W ar I broke out, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and participated in all action the Marines saw. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross and the Croix de guerre with palm. After the war, he was one of the organizers of the Waterman Steamship Company and in 1932, as a vice-president, headed the firm's office in Ham- burg, Germany. He was there when his first novel, COMPANY K, was published. After a brief residence in London, he returned to New York, and later moved to New Orleans where he died on May 15, 1954. Aside from titles mentioned above, he was the author of The Little Wife and Other Stories^ Come in at the Door, The Talions/ Some Like Them Short, The Looking Glass, Trial Balance and October Island.

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