Description
“‘BLIZZARD,’ AUTUMN 1934”: AN EXTRAORDINARY RARITY: INSCRIBED FIRST EDITION OF THE GREAT GATSBY, IN RARE FIRST-ISSUE DUST JACKET
FITZGERALD, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom chemise and half-morocco slipcase.
Extraordinary presentation first edition in the very rare first-issue dust jacket of Fitzgerald’s masterwork. Boldly inscribed over the entire front flyleaf, “For J. Stuart Groves / from / F. Scott Fitzgerald / ‘Blizzard,’ Autumn 1934.” Arguably the most scarce and sought-after of major inscribed modern American literary landmarks.
In 1922, Fitzgerald told his publisher Max Perkins, “I want to write something new — something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned” (Bruccoli, 198). The triumphant result three years later was The Great Gatsby, published just before what Fitzgerald called the summer of “1,000 parties and no work” (Fitch, 183). Noted critic Cyril Connolly called Gatsby one of the half dozen best American novels: “It remains a prose poem of delight and sadness which has by now introduced two generations to the romance of America, as Huckleberry Finn and Leaves of Grass introduced those before it” (The Modern Movement, 48). In this case, it is likely that the inscribed second-printing book was united with a first-issue jacket by a subsequent owner in order to have an ideal combination-copy of what is arguably the most scarce and sought-after work of modern American fiction inscribed. The book’s dust jacket is in itself something of a legend. According to one account, the jacket was actually commissioned months before the book was completed and Fitzgerald was so inspired by the haunting image of the eyes that he wrote a scene around it (“For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket,” he wrote to Perkins. “I’ve written it into the book”). Not only is the dust jacket one of the most recognizable of the 20th century, it is also one of the rarest. This first-issue jacket has the hand-corrected “J” over the lowercase “j” in “jay Gatsby” on the back cover, indicating that it was one of the earliest printed. (In the later jackets, the “j” is corrected and re-set in type).The book is first edition, second printing, correcting a few minor textual errors. Of the very small second printing, issued only a few months after the then still partially unsold first printing, some copies do appear in original first-issue jackets. Of the few known inscribed first editions, virtually all, save one, are second-printing copies. (Fitzgerald, in Capri on April 10, the day of publication, and later that month in Paris, was most likely to have had second printings of the first edition). Bruccoli A11: Ib. Recipient J. Stuart Groves was a noted book collector, whose collection was offered in 1943-1944. Bookplate of Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, owner of the Homestead Hotel and Professor at Harvard.
Only some scattered light foxing to edges and preliminary and concluding leaves; cloth exceptionally fresh and fine; inscription large, bold, and clear. Very rare dust jacket unusually bright with some expert restoration. Inscribed copies of any edition of this greatest of 20th-century American novels are most rare; significant presentation copies of the first edition, as this one, are almost unobtainable. An extraordinary rarity, and arguably the most sought after presentation in 20th-century American literature.
