John Knowles

A review copy of the first printing of the first American edition, in the scarce first-issue dust jacket, of Knowles’s classic.

• John Knowles (American).
• 1960
• New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960.
• [6], 186 pages.
• Publicity materials laid in includes review slip, an original author photo of Knowles and photograph of early-stage cover design, both black and white, 7’’ x 5’’, and two-page stapled press release all issued by Macmillan.
• Bound in original blue-grey cloth with original unclipped ($3.50) pictorial dust jacket.

A beautiful copy of Knowles’s classic of an uneasy coming-of-age, set at a boys’ boarding school among the desperately carefree 16-year-olds of 1942: too young, still, to be drafted into the war outside; too old to evade the responsibilities and guilts that follow from the breaking of their fraught and fragile private bonds. “When you played a game you won, in the same way as when you sat down to a meal you ate it. It naturally and inevitably followed. Finney never permitted himself to realize that when you won, they lost.” 

With original publisher’s publicity materials that include an image of the illustration for the (rare) jacket and a contemporary headshot of the author, along with Macmillan’s biographical sketch of Knowles and selected glowing notices from the English press. The first edition was re-issued with a new jacket design before widespread distribution, with examples like this surviving primarily from review copies.