I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
American Tragedy, An
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925. Item #06624
“A Youth of Unstable Character” - Dreiser’s Monumental Crime Novel
A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone in Exceptional Condition, with Original Slipcase
DREISER, Theodore. An American Tragedy. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925.
First trade edition. Two octavo volumes (7 1/2 x 5 inches; 191 x 127 mm.). [viii], [1–2], 3–431, [1, blank]; [viii], [1–2], 3–409, [1, blank] pp.
Publisher’s black cloth over boards, front covers with gilt medallions, spines stamped in blind and lettered in gilt. Volume II with a tiny (1/8 inch) hole at the top of the front joint, otherwise an exceptionally clean, bright set. Original tan dust jackets printed in black - remarkably well-preserved and unusually fresh. Housed in the original (repaired) printed cardboard slipcase. From the library of John K. Martin, with his small book labels on the rear paste-downs.
A near fine copy in fine dust jackets, a superior survival of a notoriously fragile production.
Dreiser’s An American Tragedy stands as one of the great American novels of crime and social determinism - a work that transcends genre while remaining central to it. Based on the infamous 1906 murder of Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake by Chester Gillette, the novel transforms a sensational case into a sweeping indictment of ambition, class anxiety, and moral weakness in modern America.
Clyde Griffiths, one of the most haunting figures in American fiction, is a man driven less by villainy than by aspiration. His entanglement with a factory girl - pregnant and insistent on marriage - threatens his ascent into high society through the wealthy Sondra Finchley. What follows is one of the most psychologically acute murder narratives ever written: a crime contemplated, deferred, and finally realized through a fatal convergence of cowardice and circumstance. Dreiser’s genius lies in presenting not a monster, but a tragically ordinary man destroyed by the very ideals he pursues.
Widely recognized as Dreiser’s masterpiece, the novel was intended by its author as a critique of American capitalism and the corrosive effects of social striving. It remains equally powerful as a work of psychological realism and as a foundational text in the literature of crime.
Designated a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone, the book occupies a central position in the canon of detective and crime fiction. It was later adapted into two major films: An American Tragedy (1931), directed by Josef von Sternberg; and
A Place in the Sun (1951), directed by George Stevens and starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters.
A Time 100 title and one of the defining American novels of the twentieth century.
Hubin, p. 123; McDonald 18A; Selby, p. 308; Encyclopedia of Crime & Detection, p. 130.
Price: $1,850.00