“TO DR. TOM—MY OLD TIME FRIEND IN AA”: FIRST EDITION OF TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY AA FOUNDER BILL WILSON

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS (WILSON, Bill). Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. [New York]: Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, (1953). Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.    $10,000.

First edition, official A.A. issue, of the seminal work that presents the principles of personal recovery, inscribed: “To Dr. Tom—My old time friend in AA, whose devotion had meant so much to so many. In gratitude, Bill. Stepping Steons, June 19/55.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous is a world-wide fellowship… banded together to solve common problems and to help fellow sufferers in recovery from that age-old, baffling malady, alcoholism.” “One motive impelling Wilson to write Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions had been the realization that the original text of the ‘Big Book,’ Alcoholics Anonymous, had become ‘frozen’—too ‘sacred’ for even its principal author’s taste” (Kurtz, 132). “During the early 1950s, before revising the ‘Big Book,’ Wilson had published a new series of Grapevine columns on the Traditions. He then undertook a matching set of commentaries on the Steps… Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the so-called 12 & 12, was issued both by A.A. for its members, and also by Harper and Brothers in a higher-priced (by 50 cents) trade edition, distinguished by its green rather than blue dust jacket” (Raphael, 154). This copy is the A.A. issue with blue dust jacket. First edition, with publisher’s code “D-C” on the copyright page and the address “Grand Central Terminal Annex” on page 18. Pen and pencil underlining, heavy in places. Signature and address of the recipient above Wilson’s inscription.

Edge-wear to boards, spine ends repaired; dust jacket with light edge-wear, shallow chipping to spine ends. A very good copy, most desirable inscribed by Wilson.