May 23, 2024 - Sale 2670

Sale 2670 - Lot 53

Price Realized: $ 375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
McCullers, Carson (1917-1967)
Three First Edition Titles.

1) The Square Root of Wonderful. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1958. First edition, octavo; bound in publisher's gray cloth-backed boards; original pictorial unclipped dust jacket, (scattered small stains; corners bumped, back hinge cracked, minor fraying at spine ends; some edgewear and chips to jacket, lower panel soiled); 8 3/8 x 5 1/2 in.

2) The Member of the Wedding. New York: New Directions, [1951]. First edition in play form, octavo; bound in red publisher's cloth, spine lettered in black, fore edge uncut; original pictorial dust jacket, unclipped (rear board and endpapers stained; edgewear, occasional small open tears and chips, large damp stain affecting most of the rear panel and sections of the spine as well as the upper corner); 8 x 5 1/2 in.

3) The Ballad of the Sad Café. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1951. First edition, octavo; bound in publisher's orange cloth, lettered and decorated in red; original pictorial dust-jacket (spine ends lightly stained and just pushed; jacket with losses to backstrip and a large closed tear to front panel); 8 x 5 1/4 in. This collection includes: "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe"; "Wunderkind"; "The Jockey"; "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland"; "The Sojourner"; "A Domestic Dilemma"; "A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud"; "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter"; "Reflections in a Golden Eye"; and "The Member of the Wedding."

A prominent figure among the authors and playwrights of the Southern Gothic genre, McCullers is best known for her novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and its 1968 film adaptation. McCullers's literary works are defined by a deeply empathetic and humanistic treatment of loneliness, tragedy, and suffering in the Southern states. In the context of McCullers's personal life, these themes could be related to her unfulfilled desire for relationships with women, particularly with Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach, of whom McCullers once wrote, "She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life."

Property from the Estate of Michael Feingold (1945-2022).