Oct 24, 2024 - Sale 2683

Sale 2683 - Lot 221

Price Realized: $ 3,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 800
Capote, Truman (1924-1984)
Other Voices, Other Rooms, First Edition, Inscribed by Capote, his Mother & Stepfather.

New York: Random House, 1948.

First edition, stated first printing, octavo; signed and inscribed by the author and his parents: "Nina Capote, José G. Capote, Truman Capote, too-with his very great admiration," each in their own hand in black ink on the front free flyleaf; bound in beige publisher's cloth stamped in green and lettered in red; with publisher's unclipped dust jacket featuring Harold Halma's famous photo portrait of Capote on verso, (jacket with some chips at edges, spine toned; marginal stain to pp. 164-165); 8 x 5 in.

Born Lillie Mae Faulk, Truman Capote's mother Nina officially separated from her first husband (Truman's father), Archulus "Arch" Persons in November of 1931 after a tumultuous and distant marriage. Their son had remained with Nina's family members in Monroeville throughout the final years of their marriage, where he met and grew close to his great friend and future collaborator Harper Lee. His mother eventually married José García Capote, the son of a former Spanish colonel and a successful businessman, in 1932. The pair would settle in New York City, where Truman joined them in 1938. His first book, Other Voices was published 10 years later, and according to Capote, was "an attempt to exorcise demons, [...] an unconscious, altogether intuitive attempt, for I was not aware, except for in a few incidents and descriptions, of its being in any serious degree autobiographical." (See Gerald Clarke's Capote: A Biography.)

Provenance: From the Estate of Michael and Joy Brown.