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This is as rare as rare gets and it is a well preserved piece of Literary history. This was written in 1942 by the wonderful writer Maureen Daly and while written for the adult audience, it became the very first Young Adult fiction book ever. It is a perennial favorite of young adults and has been through more than 45 printings over the 73 years since Ms. Daly wrote this while still in college. I discovered this fine specimen wrapped in brown paper (like we used to do, see last pic) and that really protected the boards (check out all photos). The pages are in very nice shape and show very little foxing. There is a paper that a youngster wrote about the US Flag in the back (see photo) and that has foxed and left some foxing on the end page where it was stored. The historical value, literally speaking, is enhanced not only by the first edition status (publisher's page reflects 1942 copyright as does title page and no mention of previous printings) but also by the fact that this is signed by Maureen Daly on the first end page with a "Best Wishes" inscription (see photo). Overall, the book is VERY GOOD + shape, very nice color retention for the boards, no marks or writing save for Ms. Daly's signature. This is an extremely rare book that holds a very unique place in book history. Here are some comments about the book and Ms. Daly from the New York Times in 2006 in her obituary; "Maureen Daly, a writer whose first novel, Seventeenth Summer, anticipated the young-adult genre by decades when it appeared in 1942 and has endured as a classic coming-of-age story, died on Monday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 85 and made her home in Palm Desert. Written when Ms. Daly was a teenager and published while she was still in college, Seventeenth Summer told the story of Angie and Jack, two teenagers who fall in love during one enchanted summer in a Wisconsin lakeside town. Written in a straightforward, unpretentious style, the book is full of innocent pastimes boating on the lake, Cokes at the corner drugstore mingled with more grown-up pleasures like beer and cigarettes. Reviewing the novel in The New York Times Book Review, Edith H. Walton wrote: By a kind of miracle, and perhaps because she is so close to an experience not easy to recapture, Miss Daly has made an utterly enchanting book out of this very fragile little story one which rings true and sweet and fresh and sound. Published originally by Dodd, Mead & Company and most recently in 2002 by Simon & Schuster, Seventeenth Summer has sold more than a million copies worldwide, according to the reference book Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Though fiction about adolescents was nothing new in the 1940 s among its eminent practitioners had been Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington and Louisa May Alcott the concept of novels specifically earmarked for adolescents would not exist until the late 1960 s, ushered in by writers like Paul Zindel and S. E. Hinton. Yet a quarter-century earlier, Seventeenth Summer anticipated many of these authors concerns, as Teri Lesesne, a professor of library science at Sam Houston State University and a specialist in young-adult literature, explained in a telephone interview yesterday. For 42, this is a pretty avant-garde young woman: she smokes, she drinks, she dates, Ms. Lesesne said. She thinks about more than a chaste kiss at the end of a date. Maureen Patricia Daly was born on March 15, 1921, in Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She came to the United States with her family as a young child. When Ms. Daly was 15, her short story Fifteen was published in Scholastic magazine. The next year she wrote another story, fittingly titled Sixteen, that was included in the O. Henry collection of 1938, which gathered together the best short stories of the previous year. Then, working in the basement of her parents home in Fond du Lac, Wis., she began Seventeenth Summer. This offers a rare opportunity for the collector.
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