This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/1/2023
[McMURTRY, Larry (1936-2021), his copy]. WEST, Nathanael (1903-1940). The Dream Life of Balso Snell. New York and Paris: Contact Editions, [1931].
Tall 8vo. Title-page printed in teal and black. Original teal and black printed wrappers (some very light wear at extreme ends); original glassine (chipped with losses). Provenance: Larry McMurtry (his bookplate, which he designed, features the horseshoe-shaped brand his father and grandfather used on the McMurtry cattle), from his personal library at his home in Archer City; James Laughlin (bookplate); contemporary gift inscription on ffep dated 1932.
FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, number 316 of 500 copies of WEST’S FIRST BOOK. In Freudenberger and Stein’s Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home with Books (2019), McMurtry talks of not burdening his heirs with his 30,000-book library at his home in Archer City but there were a select few that he would never sell: “Nathanael West’s four novels would be ones I wouldn’t part with: The Dream Life of Balso Snell; Miss Lonelyhearts; A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin; and The Day of the Locust. Other than those volumes, my library is, you might say, ‘a vibrant intellectual ecosystem’”. White 1.