[McMURTRY, Larry (1936-2021), his copy]. WEST, Nathanael (1903-1940). Miss Lonelyhearts. New York: Liveright Inc, [1933].
8vo. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in silver on a black background, yellow top stain (spine faintly sunned and ever so slightly skewed, front hinge gently over-opened at title); IN THE RARE ORIGINAL UNCLIPPED DUST JACKET (spine completely restored in facsimile, front panel partially restored near lower corner and near foot, closed tear repaired to front panel, flap wraps discreetly reinforced with Japanese tissue on verso, faint vertical crease to front panel, front fore-corners chipped). 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.
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE with the Liveright imprint on title-page, “Liveright” stamped at foot of spine, and the notice of presswork on copyright. While the first edition was being issued, Liveright Inc. went bankrupt, and the printer refused to release 1,400 copies of the book after 800 had been shipped and bookshops were unable to source copies. The publication was finally taken over by Harcourt, Brace and Company, using the plates of the Liveright edition. Copies of the first issue are rare (only 800 in circulation), especially in the original dust jacket. 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’”. Connolly 76; White 3.