"ONE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR"

BURNS, John Horne. The Gallery. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, (1947). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $650.

First edition of "the first book of real magnitude to come out of the [Second World] War" (John Dos Passos).

This important World War II novel was the author's first book; he published only two others before his death in 1953 at the age of 36. "The Gallery is now recognized as one of the great American novels of the Second World War… the confrontation between American and Italian experience, both cultural and moral, evinces striking affinities with the treatment of the 'international theme' in the fiction of Henry James" (Stringer, 102). "No one will ever forget this book: a story torn from impassioned experience of modern wars in a shattered city of the ancient world. The Gallery is unique, unsparing, immediate; inextinguishable" (Shirley Hazzard). Parker, Twentieth Century Novel, 267.

Book about-fine, bright corner-clipped dust jacket near-fine, with only slight soiling and mild rubbing to extremities. A handsome copy.