Edward Hope is Edward Hope Coffey, Jr., of New York. I forget his
age, but he is about thirty. He was graduated from Princeton and has
varied newspaper work with employment in a great advertising agency.
He has begun to write for the theater and was the author of one of
the most amusing sketches in the _Garrick Follies_ for 1926, produced
by the Theatre Guild School.
As a newspaperman he first found his niche pinch-hitting for Don
Marquis, then a columnist on the _Sun_, New York. Don tells me that
having occasion to look up his column a year later at about the time
Hope had filled it for him, he found himself quite unable to tell
which was his stuff and which was Hope's. Hope now writes the column
in the New York _Herald Tribune_ which Marquis used to do daily.
If I am not mistaken, "Almost a Gentleman" was Hope's second real
attempt at a short story--and he sold his first at first try. He is
not invariably a humorist, but sometimes follows it as the line of
least resistance. He is probably almost the least known of the
authors represented in this book--due to his youth as a writer--but
every collection like this should produce one "unknown" and he will
serve very well. And, anyway, "Almost a Gentleman"--first published
in the _Saturday Evening Post_ for February 25, 1925--deserves to be
here.