RAYNOLDS, Robert

Fortune [Signed]

New York: William Morrow & Company, 1935. First Edition. Octavo (21cm.); original charcoal cloth in black pictorial dust jacket by Andor Braun, dark blue topstain; [6],424pp. A few tiny chips and small scratches and bald spots along jacket flap folds, else Near Fine in a Very Good or better copy of the scarce jacket. Signed by the author on front free endpaper.

Raynolds's third novel, dedicated to his friend Thomas Wolfe of whom he would later write a short memoir, Thomas Wolfe: Memoir of a Friendship (1965). In the memoir Raynolds details his difficulty in getting Fortune published and the "despoiling" revisions he had to make in order to see it into print, turning it into a "mutilation of a better work I had done" (Thomas Wolfe: Memoir of a Friendship (2014 ed.)). The finished work portrays the decline and fall of a small east-coast American city from 1921 to 1934, populated with diverse characters ranging from wealthy ladies in failing marriages to menial laborers to suave businessmen. HANNA 2974.

Price: $450.00

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