To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee J.B. Lippincott, U.S.A. 1960 This book is one of the gems of my collection. Although this is a first book club edition, it came out at the same time as the true first edition. The value of this copy is hard to assess. There are no signed or unsigned [...]
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck Viking, U.S.A. 1939 John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for this classic novel of the Great Depression. According to Wikipedia, The Grapes of Wrath was ‘a phenomenon on the scale of a national event’. There were public book burnings, and Steinbeck was accused of Communism and Socialist propagandizing. More [...]
Herzog Saul Bellow Viking, New York, 1964 Saul Bellow was born in Quebec, but lived in the United States since he was nine. He won the Nobel Prize in 1976. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award three times and the only one to be nominated six times. He has also [...]
Of Human Bondage Somerset Maugham Doubleday, U.S.A. 1936 The true first edition of this semi-autobiographical classic is the American George H. Doran publication of 1915. The British William Heinemann edition came out slightly later that same year. Three film versions of this novel have been made. The first movie version from 1934 is the film [...]
For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia, 1940 This book takes it title from John Donne’s Meditation No. 18, written in 1624. For Whom the Bell Tolls, which takes place during the Spanish civil war, is one of Hemingway’s masterpieces. The film adaptation starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman was nominated [...]
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway Scribner’s, U.S.A. 1952 The Old Man and the Sea came out two years after Across the River and Into the Trees, Hemingway’s most negatively reviewed novel. It seems the reviewers were still on a negative slant when The Old Man and the Sea was published. Many of [...]
The Catcher in the Rye — First Book Club Edition J.D. Salinger Little, Brown and Company, U.S.A. 1949 I wanted to feature a really special book for my 100th post! So this is it; my cherished first book club edition of The Catcher in the Rye with the Lotte Jacobi photo of Salinger on the [...]