"SUSPENDED BETWEEN RADIANCE AND DARKNESS": FIRST EDITION OF MCCULLERS’ THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, IN THE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET

MCCULLERS, Carson. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1940). Octavo, original buff cloth, original dust jacket; custom clamshell box. $9800.

First edition of McCullers' first novel that immediately earned the 22-year-old writer "great critical prominence," an especially beautiful copy in very scarce original dust jacket, handsomely housed in a custom clamshell box.

It was with this novel of a deaf mute that the young Carson McCullers "immediately achieved great critical prominence" (Hart, 242). "No matter what the age of its author, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter would be a remarkable book. When one reads that McCullers is a girl of 22 it becomes… something beyond that, something more akin to the vocation of pain to which a great poet is born" (New York Times). Bruccoli II: 251.

Book very fresh, faintest trace of edge-wear to colorful dust jacket. A splendid copy in fine condition.