The Sixties Catalogue

11 J u l y 2 0 2 0 Inscribed By Harry Crews 9. CREWS, Harry. The Gospel Singer. New York, 1968. Octavo, original green cloth, dust jacket. $2400. Click for more info First edition of Crews’ critically praised first book, boldly inscribed: “For A—, Best Wishes, Harry Crews.” “Crews came to wide notice with his first novel, The Gospel Singer , published in 1968. The book, about a traveling evangelist who meets a lurid fate in a Georgia town, features characters of the sort that would people his dozen later novels: sideshow freaks, an escaped lunatic and a sociopath or two” ( New York Times ). “His writing is rooted in the Southern Gothic tradition” ( New Georgia Encyclopedia ). Book fine; tiny bit of tape reinforcement to verso of dust jacket. A scarce about-fine inscribed copy. “Men to whom God is dead worship one another.”