New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925.
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Hardcover. First edition, first state in first printing dustwrapper. Foxing to page edges and the first and last gatherings, mild browning to the endpapers but an especially bright and square, near fine copy, in near fine, slightly chipped, first printing dustwrapper with a little judicious professional repair. The folds have been internally strengthened, the chips have been stabilized, and several tears repaired, with retouching to the creases and rubbing. A very attractive copy, substantially intact and original, and with the colors of the jacket notably fresh (the blue frequently becomes age-toned). This copy is the correct first printing with "sick in tired" and all other issue points; the jacket is the first printing, with lowercase "j" in "jay Gatsby" on the back hand-corrected in ink. An excellent example of the famous dustwrapper, designed by Francis Cugat, which was so striking that Fitzgerald actually revised the novel before publication to incorporate elements of the artwork into the story. He wrote Scribner's in 1924, "For Christ's sake don't give anyone that jacket you're saving for me. I've written it into the book." The first printing jacket, which had to be corrected because of a typo (only one uncorrected example is known, in an institutional library), was left a little taller than the book itself. As a consequence almost all of the small number of examples that do survive have chips at the edges. Housed in an attractive, quarter morocco clamshell case with raised bands. *Bruccoli* A11.I.a, *Connolly 100* 48.
Item #346611