?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
"MERRY CHRISTMAS IN JULY" (CHILDREN'S LITERATURE.) Davies, Valentine. Miracle on 34th Street. Small 8vo, original silver-lettered brown buckram with blindstamped Santa device on front cover; pictorial dust jacket, corners clipped retaining price, spine panel dampstained mostly evident on verso, light edgewear; previous owner's overlapping blindstamps on lower front free endpaper and half-title. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1947)
first edition, presentation copy, inscribed in the year of publication by the author on front free endpaper "For Irv & Edna, Merry Christmas in July with much love, from Val, July 28, 1947." Based on the original screenplay for the film starring Maureen O'Hara and Edmund Gwenn, the book was rushed into publication in order to coinicide with the film's opening in the summer of 1947; the rear panel of the dust jacket serves as a tie-in for the movie ("After you read the book--see the picture"). Miracle on 34th Street earned Davies an Academy Award for Best Story. On the shortlist of all-time Christmas greats, with signed copies seldom encountered.
