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Octavo, 218 pages. In Good condition with a Good condition dust jacket. Orange and brown spine with a white paper design and black and orange lettering. Dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar covering, price is uncut "$2.00 net", has moderate age-toning, mild wear along the extremities, chipping along the fore corners and edges, a large tear on the rear cover head edge, and chipping along the tail joint corners. Boards have mild age-toning along the head and tail edges, mild wear along the extremities, and bending along the rear fore corner. Textblock has adhesive staining on the pastedowns and hinges between the end-pages and pastedowns, mild age-toning throughout, mild age-toning along the edges, mild wear along the edges, and blue inking along the head edge. Inscription on the front end-page reading "To Carl, with thanks for [illegible] the [illegible]", signed James M. Cain, dated 'July 6, 1970'. DL consignment. Shelved Room C. James M. Cain was born July 1, 1892 in Annapolis MD. His parents were college-educated children of Irish immigrants, which partially contributed to Cain's grammar and interest in writing. By the age of 13, Cain had rejected the Catholic Church, later in life forming his own view on God. After university, Cain would hold a few different jobs including a school principal and journalist, working for the "Baltimore Sun" and later on magazines "The American Mercury" and "The New Yorker" throughout the roaring 20's. These experiences would help feed into his writing as Cain became a progenitor of hardboiled crime fiction. "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" came about during a hard time in Cain's life. In 1941 Cain was recovering from surgery and in financial distress, and set out to write a novel which could be both novel and movie, the only one written with the goal of becoming a movie in mind. "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" was rejected when initially presented to publishers in 1941 as it flew in the face of the highly patriotic themes favored during that era, being a novel about corruption and violence in the midwest. However, after the success of some of Cain's other novellas, Alfred A. Knopf took an interest and published it in 1942. Initial critical and commercial responses to "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" were mostly negative, most often criticized for feeling like a rushed novel with a third-person perspective which Cain clearly was not comfortable in. Knopf said that within the first year of sales, "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" had only sold 7,500 copies as was basically dead in the water. However, the novel since developed some following and fans, and has been much more well-regarded as the years have gone on. "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" finally saw a film adaptation in 1956, long after Cain had hoped. The film was titled "Slightly Scarlet" and received a mixed critical response, some hailing it as the best of the year, others criticizing it as unrecognizable from the novel it was based on. 1387433. Special Collections. First Edition, First Printing, First State Dust Jacket.
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