Description

“WE ARE NOW AT THE END OF THE SEQUENCE—PLEASE ACCEPT THIS GIFT WITH THE ADMIRATION FROM THE GIVER?”: TAPS AT REVEILLE, IN SCARCE FIRST-STATE DUST JACKET, PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY INSCRIBED BY FITZGERALD TO HIS LANDLORD AND FRIEND, ACTOR EDWARD EVERETT HORTON

FITZGERALD, F. Scott. Taps at Reveille. New York: Scribner’s, 1935. Octavo, original dark green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, first issue, second state (as often), very rare presentation/association copy of the last collection of Fitzgerald’s short stories published during his life, inscribed to his California landlord, “We are now at the end of the sequence—please accept this gift with admiration from the giver, of you, as a man and as an artist. F. Scott Fitzgerald to Edward Everett Horton. Encino 1939.” In scarce first-state dust jacket, one of only 5100 copies printed.

Fitzgerald chose for inclusion in this volume what he considered his best short stories from the previous decade—many of which dealt with a pre-war boy in his middle teens. “Mr. Fitzgerald is always miraculously adept at describing adolescent love affairs and adolescent swagger” (Edith Walton). Included is the much-anthologized story “Babylon Revisited.” Second state, with pages 349-52 cancelled; first state dust jacket with no price printed on the front flap; this copy bears a rubber-stamped price as found in some copies. Bruccoli A18.1.a. Recipient Edward Everett Horton was a character actor with a long and varied career, appearing in such films as The Front Page (1931), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and numerous Fred Astaire/Ginger Roger films such as Top Hat (1935). Fitzgerald rented the guesthouse on the Horton’s Encino estate (“Belly Acres”), where Horton kept an eye on the failing, often inebriated author until he moved over the hills to be near Sheila Graham. It was in these last two apartments that Fitzgerald worked on the unfinished Last Tycoon.

Cloth mildly rubbed, scarce dust jacket very good with shallow chipping, paper repairs to verso. An exceptionally scarce and desirable inscribed Fitzgerald work.