The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley. New York. 1924. Grosset & Dunlap. Illustrated With Scenes From The Photoplay. Published serially under the title of 'The Curse of Capistrano'. 300 pages. hardcover.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

This is the true first edition and first book appearance of this story which originally appeared as a magazine serial, as a 1920 film starring Douglas Fairbanks (which was itself based on the author's serialized story ‘The Curse of Capistrano'), and finally in book form in 1924. . . By all appearances, Don Diego Vega is an effete and foppish aristocrat, one of the noble class that cares nothing about the peasants who eke out a meager existence in Mexican California during the 1820s. But Don Diego's timorous reputation is merely a mask to conceal his alter ego: Zorro, a Californian Robin Hood whose swift blade strikes down those who exploit the poor and oppressed. This magnificent tale remains a prototype of swashbuckling, heroic fiction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Johnston McCulley (February 2, 1883 - November 23, 1958) was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro. Many of his novels and stories were written under the pseudonyms Harrington Strong, Raley Brien, George Drayne, Monica Morton, Rowena Raley, Frederic Phelps, Walter Pierson, and John Mack Stone, among others. McCulley started as a police reporter for The Police Gazette and served as an Army public affairs officer during World War I. An amateur history buff, he went on to a career in pulp magazines and screenplays, often using a Southern California backdrop for his stories. Aside from Zorro, McCulley created many other pulp characters, including Black Star, The Spider, The Mongoose, and Thubway Tham. Many of McCulley's characters - The Green Ghost, The Thunderbolt, and The Crimson Clown - were inspirations for the masked heroes that have appeared in popular culture from McCulley's time to the present day. Born in Ottawa, Illinois, and raised in Chillicothe, Illinois, he died in 1958 in Los Angeles, California aged 75.