Joan Didion

A signed, first edition copy of Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion.

• Joan Didion (American).
• New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970. 
• Octavo.
• 214 pages.
• Signed flat by Joan Didion on the title page.
• Faded orange spine with back lettering, dust jacket is wrapped in a mylar covering, price is uncut.

Born December 5, 1934, Joan Didion's early life was spent traveling around with her family as her father as a finance officer in the Army Air Corps, leading Joan to be an avid reader who pushed through her social anxieties through acting and public speaking. Didion would write her first novel during her time at "Vogue" in 1963, Run, River, which Didion worked on together with her future husband John Gregory Dunne. It would be Play It As It Lays, Didion's second novel which released in 1970, that would solidify her as a master of both fiction and non-fiction writing after her work Slouching Towards Bethlehem gained her great notoriety. Play It As It Lays was highly praised by critics, though the public had mixed reception many disliking the protagonist. Despite initially mixed reception, Play It As It Lays has remained an American classic, earning an inclusion on Time's "100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005" and a 1972 movie adaptation who's screenplay was co-written by Didion and her husband.