“EARHART BECAME AN IMMEDIATE SENSATION”: FIRST EDITION OF 20 HRS. AND 40 MIN., INSCRIBED BY AMELIA EARHART

EARHART, Amelia. 20 Hrs. and 40 Min. Our Flight in the Friendship. The American Girl, First Across the Atlantic by Air, Tells Her Story. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928. Octavo, original burgundy cloth, reproduction autograph endpapers. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First trade edition, profusely illustrated with 61 black-and-white photographic plates, inscribed on the recto of the photographic frontispiece: “To Fanny Emily Nordlinger from Amelia M. Earhart.”

“In April 1928 Earhart received the telephone call that would change her life: an offer to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Earhart’s impeccable character and physical resemblance to Charles A. Lindbergh made her an easy choice for the promoters, aviator Richard Byrd, publisher George Putnam, and socialite Amy Phipps Guest, who had originally intended to make the flight. On the morning of 3 July 1928 Earhart departed from Boston Harbor in a trimotor Fokker with pilots Wilmer ‘Bill’ Stultz and Louis ‘Slim’ Gordon. Earhart agreed to go as a passenger, though ‘the idea of going as just ‘extra weight’ did not appeal to me at all.’ Following the departure from Trepassy, Newfoundland, at 11:40 a.m. on 17 June, the Friendship encountered miserable weather, and Earhart never touched the controls during the 20-hour, 40-minute flight. Stultz landed the Fokker on the water at Burry Port, Wales, and Earhart became an immediate sensation. Earhart was astounded by the reception she received. She was feted in London and New York and was given a ticker-tape parade down Broadway with her nearly forgotten fellow pilots. On the postflight tour around the country… Earhart sensed her opportunity to promote her passions of aviation, feminism, and pacifism… Earhart became an accomplished speaker, writer, and columnist for Cosmopolitan. She joined Lindbergh in promoting a new air mail service, Transcontinental Air Transport, and she purchased a Lockheed Vega, which she flew in the first women’s cross-country air derby in 1929” (ANB). Preceded the same year by a signed limited edition. Without scarce dust jacket. Bookseller ticket.

Interior fine, only light rubbing to cloth spine ends. An about-fine inscribed copy.