This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/17/2023
[McMURTRY, Larry (1936-2021), his copy]. LIEBLING, Abbott Joseph (1904-1963). Chicago: The Second City. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952.
8vo. Numerous drawings in the text by Saul Steinberg. Original pictorial boards (spine gently sunned); original dust jacket (spine sunned, some spotting or browning to extremities). 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, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY LIEBLING. Liebling, a sarcastic and witty New Yorker magazine writer, was no fan of Chicago as he made clear in his 1952 tour of Chicago: “There was an outer-London dinginess to the streets…I found it beguilingly medieval”. Chicagoans quickly dismissed it, including one Tribune columnist that wrote that the book was “filled with startling inaccuracies which comforted New Yorkers in their oneness”.