For your consideration is a Rare First Edition of "The Saga of Billy the Kid" by William Noble Burns, 1926, publisher Grosset & Dunlap. This entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of Billy in this century. The book focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. Billy represented the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilization was rapidly displacing. Walter Noble Burns's “Saga of Billy the Kid” kindled a fascination in Billy the Kid that survives to this day. Walter Noble Burns (1866-1932), a Chicago Newspaper writer in the early 20th century, traveled to New Mexico in the 1920s to meet those who knew Billy the Kid and visit the same spots where Billy the Kid roamed some 45 years before. When he sat down to write the book, he wrote like a cowboy. Burns was a writer of Western history and a Western fiction author. He was notable for this book. The orange cloth bound hardcover is in good overall condition. The intact top edge painted deckled pages are in very nice condition, age tanning noted. Measures 5.25"W x 7.75"L x 1"D, weight is 14oz.