[Item #3377] The Best American Short Stories 1956. Martha Foley, Roger Angell, Shirley Jackson, Jack Kerouac, Flannery O'Connor, Philip Roth.
The Best American Short Stories 1956

The Best American Short Stories 1956

New York, NY; Boston, MA: Ballantine Books, Inc. in association with Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956. First Softcover Edition. Softcover. This vintage 1956 edition of the annual anthology of American short fiction first published in 1915 features "The Mexican Girl" by Jack Kerouac, which had appeared the previous year in The Paris Review & would be a chapter of On the Road, the breakthrough book by the Founding Father of the Beat Generation, the following year (1957). Also in this volume are stories by such venerable American writers as Roger Angell, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, a very young Philip Roth & many others. All of the stories were gathered from prestigious magazines & literary journals that had first published them, including The New Yorker (Angell) & even Fantasy and Science Fiction (Jackson). This is the first softcover edition, presumed first printing, issued simultaneously or very soon after the Houghton Mifflin Company hardcover edition (see Charters, B2, pg. 55). As noted in fine print at lower back cover, "This is a reprint of an original anthology. A hardbound edition of this book, priced at $4.00, may be obtained from your local bookstore." The original price of this "Dolphin Edition" co-published with Ballantine Books was 50 cents, as noted at upper left front cover. Quite a bargain, reflecting the American reading public's ravenous appetite then & now for stories by up-&-coming writers. A delightful "reading copy" collectible for the Kerouac completist & general devotee of American literature, in relatively good-to-near-fine condition for a mass-produced item in its seventh decade: Moderate rubbing, scratching, creasing to front, back covers & spine; moderate wear, bumps & creases at edges & corners of same including several short, closed tears at right side edge of front cover; mild rubbing & fading of orange dye to edges of text block. Interior fine with only inevitable browning of pulp-quality page leaves (but rather light & mostly at blank margins); small bumps at corners of some of same; water(?) staining of inner front cover decreasingly extending to first few of same. Good- Near Fine. [Item #3377]

Price: $40.00