"DID YOU SEE MORE GLASS?": LOVELY FIRST EDITION OF SALINGER'S NINE STORIES

SALINGER, J.D. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, (1953). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $7500.

First edition of Salinger's much anticipated second book, his only collection of short stories. A lovely copy.

Published two years after Catcher in the Rye, "Nine Stories further solidified Salinger's critical and popular reputation as spokesman for another postwar variety of disengaged seriousness, bordering in one direction on whimsy and in the other on mysticism. In them he perfectly caught the mood of the disaffected middle-class teenagers of the 1950s who couldn't quite let go, but also didn't want to join in" (Hoffman, 144). These stories, written from 1948 on, introduce the Glass family, whom Salinger would revisit in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction (1963). Stated "First Edition" on copyright page; with two grades of paper as issued by publisher. Bixby A3. Bruccoli & Clark I:315. Starosciak A35.

Book clean and fine; dust jacket gently mellowed, with a shallow chip to spine head, near-fine. A lovely copy.