The Magnificent Ambersons

Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918.

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Hardcover. First edition. Fine in a fine example of the rare dustwrapper with just a touch of soiling on the spine. There were two variants of the jacket, with no established priority. This copy without a price on the spine, and another issued with $1.40 price on the spine. Reviews of the book in contemporary periodicals appear both with and without the $1.40 price. The late Pulitzer Prize collector Don Scriven, maintained that he had read that the publisher was undecided about the price of the book. Further evidence of this would seem to be reinforced by copies that we've seen with the $1.40 price canceled by the publisher and re-priced at $1.50. A copy of the book in this particular variant jacket sold at auction at Swann Galleries for $16,800.

Filmed in 1925 as *Pampered Youth*. Two decades later Orson Welles wrote, produced, and directed his own film adaptation, an inventive, magnificent successor to his first film, *Citizen Kane*, which was nominated for Best Picture in 1942. This was the second novel to win the Pulitzer Prize and is rarely seen in jacket. This is by a great measure the nicest copy that we are aware of.

Item #456447

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Item #456447 The Magnificent Ambersons. Booth TARKINGTON.
The Magnificent Ambersons

Booth Tarkington
birth name: Newton Booth Tarkington
born: 7/29/1869
died: 5/19/1946
nationality: USA

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Biography

American novelist and dramatist, best known for his satirical and sometimes romanticized pictures of American Midwesterners. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore

Collecting tips:

Booth Tarkington as collectible author is an enigma, wrapped in a contradiction, and drizzled with irony. Ask any book collector or dealer who have been around for a long time and they'll probably shrug -- who cares about Booth Tarkington? But the funny thing is that he has more collected books than many more highly regarded authors. He wrote two of the first four Pulitzer Prize novels, The Magnicent Ambersons (1919) and Alice Adams (1922), both of which are wicked scarce in jacket. The first title is also sought as a film source for the 1942 Orson Welles' film, as are several of his other books including Presenting Lily Mars (1933), Monsieur Beaucaire (1900, the 1924 film featured Rudolph Valentino), and Seventeen (1916). One of the primary guides to collectible children's books is entitled Peter Parley to Penrod, the later title, Penrod (1914), is a Tarkington novel, and very scarce in jacket. Even booksellers have a favorite Tarkington title -- Rumbin Galleries (1937) about a European emigre dealing in art and antiques in New York City, who dispenses wisdom about the antiquarian trades, all the while smiling benevolently upon his lovely assistant and her beamish beau. There is even a market for him as an Indiana author -- notably for his first book, The Gentleman from Indiana (1899, be sure to note whether the ear of corn on the spine of the book is pointing up or down!). He wrote approximately a zillion other books as well, some of them good, many of them forgotten. But then who cares about Booth Tarkington anyway?

Email us to request a printed copy of our catalog of Booth Tarkington Rare Books and First Editions (or download it via the link as a 4.61 MB pdf file).more