"MAGNIFICENTLY VITAL READING": FIRST EDITION OF ALL THE KING’S MEN

WARREN, Robert Penn. All the King's Men. New York: Harcourt, Brace, (1946). Octavo, original maroon cloth, original dust jacket, custom chemise and half leather slipcase. $6000.

First edition in first-issue dust jacket of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a "classic cautionary tale of power and corruption" (NPR) inspired by the life of the colorful and controversial Huey Long.

"Robert Penn Warren, the nation's first Poet Laureate, won the first of three Pulitzer Prizes in 1947 for All The King's Men, a richly detailed study of the life and times of a populist politician named Willie Stark… inspired by the Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long" (New York Times). The novel was praised by Sinclair Lewis as "massive, impressive, yet so full of light subtleties and surprising drama that it is never ponderous" and the NYT called it "magnificently vital reading, a book so charged with dramatic tension it almost crackles with blue sparks, a book… drenched with fierce emotion, narrative pace and poetic imagery." "One is tempted to say that the truth Warren aims at is none other than the eternal verities of the human heart Faulkner regarded as the novelist's great charge" (Contemporary Novelists, 1438). Basis for both the Academy Award-winning 1949 film and the 2006 adaptation starring Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet. "First edition" stated on copyright page. First-issue dust jacket, with $3.00 price and "What Sinclair Lewis says…" on rear panel. Bruccoli & Clark I:402.

Book near-fine with minimal edgewear, in an extremely good dust jacket with light wear overall, usual fading to spine lettering and light offsetting from book cloth along upper edge.