INSCRIBED BY WILLIAM PETER BLATTY

BLATTY, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper and Row, (1971). Octavo, original half maroon cloth, original dust jacket. $1500.

First edition of Blatty's bestselling horror novel, inscribed on the title page: "For Jon—With good wishes from William Peter Blatty."

Blatty's novel "took the horror genre out of the specialist category and into the bestseller racks" (Horror 100 Best 68) and is considered "a landmark of modern horror fiction that grounds the classic battle between Good and Evil in the generation gap of the 1960s and explores the incongruity of religious faith in the modern secular world" (Fantasy and Horror 6-36). "An intelligent exploration of possession and exorcism… an intense and dark theodicy. The screen version [released 1973], with its realistic and shocking effects, transformed the horror movie and revived the moribund horror fiction market" (Clute & Grant, 119). The 1973 film version, directed by William Friedkin, starred Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, and Linda Blair in her break-out role.

Book with a few stains to interior, price-clipped dust jacket with only slightest soiling to rear flap and minor rubbing to extremities. A near-fine inscribed copy.