"SHE HAS SOMETHING LIKE GENIUS": FIRST EDITION OF LADY SINGS THE BLUES, INSCRIBED BY BILLIE HOLIDAY

HOLIDAY, Billie and DUFTY, William. Lady Sings the Blues. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1956. Octavo, original red cloth, photographic endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom half black morocco clamshell box. $9200.

First edition of the autobiography of the immortal Billie Holiday, boldly inscribed by her: "For Shirley / Best of Everything, Billie Holiday."

On publication of Billie Holiday's Lady Sings the Blues, co-authored with New York Post editor William Dufty, the singer's autobiography was praised for its powerful story of "a woman who is probably the foremost living singer of the blues… at her best, she has something like genius" (New York Times). Holiday gave a Carnegie Hall concert performing songs associated with Lady Sings the Blues, accompanied by narration of excerpts from the book, in the year of publication; three years later she was dead at the age of 44. With "First Edition" on copyright page.

Text overall clean with a few small spots, traces of tape removal to endpapers, rubbing to spine lettering; price-clipped dust jacket with slight edge wear, toning to spine, tape reinforcement to flaps and edges. A very good signed copy.