JACK CONROY'S SECOND NOVEL, A WORLD TO WIN, 1935, INSCRIBED BY HIM

CONROY, Jack. A World to Win. (New York): Covici Friede, (1935). Octavo, original grey cloth, original dust jacket. $1200.

First edition of the second novel by this important American "worker-writer," inscribed by him,"For A— M—- a book written many years ago but I hope you'll find it of interest. Best wishes from Jack Conroy with hospitalization for diabetes. Sincerely Jack Conroy, Moberly, September 26, 1978."

Conroy, "a premiere midwestern novelist, editor, and folklorist," was linked "with the region from the time of his birth in the Monkey Nest coal camp on the outskirts of Moberly, Missouri. His Irish immigrant father, who had studied for the priesthood, died in a mining accident," along with three of his brothers when Conroy was still a boy. Later known as the "Sage of Moberly," Conroy worked throughout the 1920s as a migratory worker, and one of his first published works, "Hard Winter," "was accepted by H. L. Mencken's American Mercury in 1931, when he was digging ditches and sleeping on a sandpile. He went on to organize and edit from his Moberly home two significant journals, the pioneering Rebel Poet (1931) and the influential Anvil (1933)," which "published Richard Wright for the first time" (Buhle, Encyclopedia of the American Left, 163, 51). In 1933 he published his first book, The Disinherited, followed two years later by A World To Win. Both novels contained extensive autobiographical elements that cemented his reputation as one of America's most important proletarian writers. Conroy's writings are particularly "nourished by Midwestern currents of radicalism, the old labor press, and homegrown varieties of populist and socialist culture and politics… his sources are Southwestern humor, vernacular protest and indigenous radicalism"(Wixon, Worker-Writer, 72). Price stamp to dust jacket front flap.

Book near-fine with mild discoloration to rear pastedown. Scarce price-clipped dust jacket near-fine, with slight fading to spine, one small chip to rear panel.