Description

RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, INSCRIBED BY TRUMAN CAPOTE TO HIS BELOVED COUSIN AND AUNT, IN WHOSE HOME HE WROTE HIS FIRST BOOK, OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS

CAPOTE, Truman. A Christmas Memory. New York: Random House, (1956) [ie. 1966]. Slim octavo, original half teal cloth, original slipcase.                                                                                                                                                     

First trade edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the half title to his aunt and cousin, the closest family with whom he lived after his mother’s abandonment and with whom he lived while writing Other Voices, Other Rooms: “for Lucille and Cecelia with much love from Truman.”

Capote’s autobiographical tale of a boyhood Christmas season in rural Alabama first appeared in Mademoiselle in 1956 and was one of three short stories published with the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958. Preceded only by the signed limited edition of 600 copies printed the same year. In slipcase with photographic label of a young Capote and his beloved cousin Sook Faulk. This copy is inscribed to Truman Capote’s maternal aunt and cousin, Lucille and Cecilia [Faulk Ingram]. Lucille and Cecilia were his most closely related family. In fact, Capote’s mother gave his birth certificate to her sister when he was four and never reclaimed it. When, as a young writer, Capote needed solitude to begin work on his first novel, he found it at Lucille Ingram’s home. It was there that he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms. Over the course of Capote’s writing career, he gave Lucille several of his books.

Book about-fine, with a few instances of faint scattered foxing to text and slight foxing to boardsboards, light rubbing to spine. Slipcase about-fine. A most rare and desirable inscribed presentation copy with an outstanding familial association.