Signed book: Tender Is the Night. First edition, first printing, in first printing dust jacket, Bruccoli A 15.I.a. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934. Hardcover bound in navy blue cloth with spine lettered in gilt, with pictorial first printing dust jacket including critical blurbs by Eliot, Mencken and Rosenfeld, 5.5 x 7.5, 408 pages. Signed on the first free end page in fountain pen, "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Affixed on inside back paste-down is a "Hochschild Kohn & Co., Baltimore" label, which was Maryland's largest department store in 1934. Fitzgerald was living in Baltimore at the time Tender Is the Night was published— first printing just 7,600 copies—and may have held a book signing event or distributed signed books through the Hochschild Kohn store. Autographic condition: fine, with a trivial brush to the first letter of the signature. Book condition: VG/VG, with irregular discoloration to boards. Expert restorations to the first printing jacket: some professional conservation work done on head of spine and partially to upper left-hand corner of front panel; back panel generally clean and bright, with no conservation work. Gold lettering on spine is bright; internal pages are bright, clean, and with little or no foxing; spine is strong; gathers tight.
Fitzgerald considered Tender Is the Night to be his greatest novel. Published in 1934 after nearly ten years of on-and-off work, it initially received a tepid response from critics, but has since been recognized as a masterpiece. It would be Fitzgerald's last novel published during his lifetime. Signed first editions of this classic work are extremely scarce and incredibly desirable.
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