“DON’T LET’S ASK FOR THE MOON! WE HAVE THE STARS!”: FIRST EDITION OF NOW, VOYAGER

PROUTY, Olive Higgins. Now, Voyager. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. Octavo, original green cloth gilt, original dust jacket. $1400.

First edition of the novel that inspired the classic 1942 film starring Bette Davis and Paul Henreid.

Following the success of her 1922 novel Stella Dallas, made into the 1937 film starring Barbara Stanwyck, Olive Prouty used her own recovery from a nervous breakdown to tell this immensely popular story of a woman's rebirth with a new life and love. Borrowing its title from a line in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the novel became the basis for one of Bette Davis's most captivating films and contains two of Hollywood's best-loved moments: a scene where Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes, handing one to Bette Davis, and the movie's closing lines—the same that end the novel—"Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the Stars!"

Book fine; slight edge-wear, mild chipping to spine ends of scarce extremely good dust jacket.