WITH AN AMERICAN FLAG AMELIA EARHART CARRIED WITH HER ON HER TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT: 20 HOURS AND 40 MINUTES, ONE OF ONLY 150 COPIES

EARHART, Amelia. 20 Hours and 40 Minutes Our Flight in the Friendship. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1928. Octavo, original three-quarter maroon cloth, uncut.

Signed limited first edition, Author's Autograph edition, copy number 134 of only 150 signed and numbered copies, signed by Earhart and the publisher on the limitation page, containing one of the small silk American flags Earhart carried from Boston to Wales on her flight across the Atlantic.

"In April 1928 Earhart received the telephone call that would change her life: an offer to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic. Earhart's impeccable character and physical resemblance to Charles A. Lindbergh made her an easy choice for the promoters, aviator Richard Byrd, publisher George Putnam, and socialite Amy Phipps Guest, who had originally intended to make the flight. On the morning of 3 July 1928 Earhart departed from Boston Harbor in a trimotor Fokker with pilots Wilmer 'Bill' Stultz and Louis 'Slim' Gordon. Earhart agreed to go as a passenger, though 'the idea of going as just 'extra weight' did not appeal to me at all.' Following the departure from Trepassy, Newfoundland, at 11:40 a.m. on 17 June, the Friendship encountered miserable weather, and Earhart never touched the controls during the 20-hour, 40-minute flight. Stultz landed the Fokker on the water at Burry Port, Wales, and Earhart became an immediate sensation. Earhart was astounded by the reception she received. She was feted in London and New York and was given a ticker-tape parade down Broadway with her nearly forgotten fellow pilots. On the postflight tour around the country… Earhart sensed her opportunity to promote her passions of aviation, feminism, and pacifism… Earhart became an accomplished speaker, writer, and columnist for Cosmopolitan. She joined Lindbergh in promoting a new air mail service, Transcontinental Air Transport, and she purchased a Lockheed Vega, which she flew in the first women's cross-country air derby in 1929" (ANB). Illustrated with 61 black-and-white photographic plates. Without original glassine or box. Bookplate of prominent Minnesota financier and bibliophile, Percival W.A. Fitzsimmons, with inked date: "Dec. 25, 1933."

Interior very fresh with only faintest rubbing to boards. A splendid about-fine copy.