About this Item
First Edition ( 'First Published In January 1943' ). You can see the covers of the book in the photos. They are very clean. The silver lettering on the front and spine is nicely bright (on a few letters in the publisher's name speck-sized bits of silver have faded). There is a light bit of crinkling at the top edge of the spine, a crease at the bottom edge of the spine. The cover edges look very good. The corners as well, no rubbing. The page edges are quite clean. The top one is tinted a light red. It looks very good. The book is solidly bound from cover to cover with nicely tight pages (all 751 of them) and nicely tight covers as well. The interior of the book is in very solid condition. There are a few, what I regard as, minor imperfections. There's a slight rippling just below the middle of the top and bottom edges on the first 20 or so pages, along with a very light vertical crease on the first 6, none of it particularly conspicuous. There's also a small, thin crease just below the top corners of the same 20 pages, far from the print. After that, I didn't see any creasing through to page 530 which has a fairly light top corner crease with a shadow of that crease on a few pages before and after. And then again on page 740 where there was a turned-down top corner which left as well a shadow of a crease on a few pages before and after. I found only one little, thin tear off the bottom edge of one page, far from the print. On the whole, the pages are very clean. Scrolling through, I found only one small tan spot at the margin of one page. However, there is a light shadow of what looks like a water stain (though without any effect on the texture of the pages), fairly small, off the top edge of pages 528-615. It touches part of the second lines of print. Again it's quite light. There are no markings in the book. There are no attachments of any kind. There are four partially erased numbers off the top edge of the blank front end paper, no other writing anywhere. Dust Jacket: There are a couple of smallish losses at the top edge of the spine, a little loss at the bottom edge as well, and the common little losses off the top and bottom edges of the junctures between the covers and the flaps. Surprisingly, there don't seem to be any edge tears.The jacket is pretty clean, a few tiny spots on the rear, some toning there as well. The flaps are in solid shape. They're quite clean, though there is one little spot of a bluish tint off the top edge of the front flap. There aren't any tears. The jacket is NOT price-clipped ($3.00), not clipped at all. I have always had it in a fitted protective cover. From the front flap (an article by the author): 'When I say 'historian' I have a meaning of my own. I portray world events in story form, because that form is the one I have been trained in. I have supported myself by writing fiction since the age of sixteen, which means forty-nine years. Now I realize that this was the one job for which I have been born: to put the period of world wars and revolutions into a great long novel. I cannot say when it will end, because I don't know exactly what the characters will do. They lead a semi-independent life, being more real to me than any of the people I know, with the single exception of my wife. Some of my characters are people who lived, and whom I had an opportunity to know and watch. Others are imaginary-- or rather, complexes of many people I've known. Lanny Budd, his mother and father and their various relatives and friends have come to be my daily and nightly companions. How long will this go on? I cannot tell. It depends in great part upon two public figures, Hitler and Mussolini. What are they going to do to mankind and what is mankind going to do to them? It seems to me hardly likely that either will die a peaceful death. I am hoping to outlive them; and whatever happens, Lanny Budd will be somewhere in the neighborhood, he will be 'in at the death', according to the fox-hunting phrase.'.
Seller Inventory # 005707
Contact seller
Report this item
