Our Government

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.

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Hardcover. First edition. Fine in a very good or better example of the second issue dustwrapper (with the boated plutocrat on the front panel) with a very small chip on the front panel, a couple of tears, and a faint horizontal line from an old jacket protector, but still a much nicer than usual copy of Cain's first book, a collection of "dialogues" or short pieces on politics and government that Cain wrote as reportage for various newspapers, and that display the concise but gritty style that eventually made it into his fiction. Despite some benign neglect of this particular title by collectors because it leans towards non-fiction, nice copies have become exceptionally uncommon.

Item #394444

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Item #394444 Our Government. James M. CAIN.

James M. Cain
birth name: James M. Cain
born: 7/1/1892
died: 10/27/1977
nationality: USA

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Biography

Novelist whose violent, sexually obsessed, and relentlessly paced melodramas epitomized the hard-boiled fiction that flourished in the U.S. in the 1930s and '40s. Three of his novels - The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941) - were also made into classics of the American screen. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

Collecting tips:

Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), is probably his most sought after title. Jacketed copies can range widely in price, from the low thousands, up to an imposing figure if in truly beautiful condition. His novel Serenade (1937), comes in two color variant jackets - primarily either purple (in our experience the scarcer) or red. As the basis for a very good movie, Mildred Pierce (1941), ("everything you ever wanted to know about chicken" according to our colleague Peter Stern) has of late attracted some serious collecting interest. Cain's first book, Our Government (1930), comes in two variant jackets - one with a large dollar sign (generally adjudged the first issued) and the other illustrated with the portrait of a bloated plutocrat. Curiously, no one seems to care much about this book, although I think it's a mistake - it is scarce, particularly in nice condition.

Email us to request a printed copy of our catalog of James M. Cain Rare Books and First Editions (or download it via the link as a 1.59 MB pdf file). We also offer a comprehensive James M. Cain Bibliography and Price Guide.more