Chandler, Raymond

The Big Sleep. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1939



8vo (7 1/4 x 4 1/4 in; 180 x 120 mm). Publisher's red-ruled and lettered black cloth in pictorial dust-jacket; edges and blanks with some spotting, light stain to front panel, few closed tears, few small chips at ends of spine panel, but an unusually unfaded example of a rare jacket.

Bruccoli A.1.2.a; Haycraft Queen Cornerstone

A remarkable presentation of one of his rarest titles, inscribed to "the beat of his heart" - his wife Cissy 

"March 16 1939 / For My Cissy / This chaste sample / of Johnsonian English / from / Ray"

This copy joins the previous lot in being particularly evocative of Chandler's personal life, which for decades revolved around his wife Cissy. "...she was the light of my life, my whole ambition. Anything else I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands at."

Chandler was never able to dedicate a book to her, believing nothing worthy, though he did try, "I planned it. I thought of it, but I never wrote it. Perhaps I couldn't have written it." (see MacShane, pp. 220-223).  

Her death shattered him and he threw himself at the bottle;  he even stayed in her old room, alone but for whiskey and a crushing grief, before he began the partial re-emergence of his last four years, due partly to Jean and her family. 

This first English edition was published in March of 1939 with an unknown number issued. Copies surviving in jacket are truly scarce, rarely if ever coming onto the market.