"BELONGS ON THE SHELF WHERE GRAPES OF WRATH, STUDS TERKEL'S HARD TIMES AND LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN SIT"

ANDERSON, Edward. Hungry Men. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1935. Octavo, original tan cloth, original dust jacket. $750.

First edition of Anderson's award-winning first novel—"raw and potent fiction slouching toward history"—in very elusive original dust jacket.

Hungry Men, published at the height of the Great Depression, "is a period piece of such precision that it often reads like a dramatization of fact… Anderson's book belongs on the shelf where Grapes of Wrath, Studs Terkel's Hard Times and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sit." Evoking the "black-and-white photographs taken by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans and FSA photographers… [it] is a raw and potent fiction slouching toward history, and a book that feels close to the truth of its time" (Christian Science Monitor). "Few would write so movingly about the Depression." Anderson spent two years "riding freights, sleeping in parks, asking for handouts and working as an itinerant odd-jobber… Hungry Men was praised by Raymond Chandler as well as the New Republic who cited the book's 'firm quiet realism'" (Black Mask Magazine). Anderson, who died in obscurity in 1969, was also a screenwriter whose second novel, Thieves Like Us (1937), was the basis for Nicholas Ray's film, They Live by Night (1948) and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974). First edition, first printing: with "First Edition" on copyright page; dust jacket with "$1,000 Prize Novel" on front panel. The publisher awarded Anderson a $1,000 prize for Hungry Men, as the "the best novel by an author who had appeared in Story (magazine)." Contemporary owner signature dated 1939.

Book fine; lightest edge-wear, faint toning to spine of colorful near-fine dust jacket.