Jesse James (1847-1882) came to Canada thanks to the self-styled "king of the Canadian pulp writers", Thomas P. Kelley.
Kelley wrote a biography of James that was published by Toronto's Export Publishing Enterprises in their News Stand Library imprint. Export put out two editions with different numbers, one for each of the Canadian and US markets. The US version came in two variants, one with and one without a dust jacket.
Less well known is a shorter version published in Outlaws Ride the Range, a collection from Toronto's Pastime Publications described as an "Action Novel". Published circa 1946/47 for the post war UK market, it is a rare book, and Kelley is using one of his many pseudonyms, T. P. Monahon. The book has 15 chapters, the first five about various "outlaws", the last ten on James. Here is a detailed look at the book but I'll focus on chapters six through 15.
Chapter six is titled "Bad Bill" and describes the life of Bill Bailey who is killed by James. The first chapter in Export's book is titled "What Happened at the 'Bucket of Blood'". The first few paragraphs are different then the versions are nearly identical. The Export book has a further 16 chapters vs nine in the Pastime version. Here is how they line up, Export first then Pastime.
Chapter 3 ---> Chapter 7
Chapter 4 ---> Chapter 8
Chapter 5 ---> Chapter 9
Chapter 6 ---> Chapter 10
Chapters 7 and 8 ---> Chapters 11, 12 and 13
Chapter 9 ---> Chapter 14
Chapter 13 ---> Chapter 15
Export chapters 2, 10-12, 14-17 are not in the Pastime version. I haven't done a detailed comparison of the chapters but I would guess over 95% of the texts are identical.
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