Chandler, Raymond

Playback. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958



8vo (8 1/4x 5/12 in; 205 x 140 mm).  Publisher's deep brown-stamped orange cloth in pictorial dust-jacket; rubbed at front flap fold and at spine head of jacket with some minor loss, triangular crease to front panel.

Dedication copy of the first American edition of his last novel and the only Chandler title to carry a printed dedication.

"For / My Jean / Perpetually loved / Ray / La Jolla, October 1958."

One of the two women he dedicated his difficult last work to (the other being Helga Greene), Jean Vounder-Davis (formerly Fracasse) was a key fixture in Chandler's life from 1957 until his death in 1959. He originally hired the forthright Australian as his secretary when he began working to try and finish Playback, but the relationship quickly became much closer, at least partially due to her two young children,  Sybil and Vincent and the role the previously reclusive Chandler began to play in their lives. (Please see the introduction to this section and the previous lot).

Chandler for a time expressed a desire to marry Jean, but when this proved unworkable, ironically at least somewhat due to the difference in age and certainly from Jean's concerns over his drinking, he still provided support to her and her family.

With the Helga Greene copy of Playback being sold from the Neville collection in 2004, the present copy and preceding lot represent the only remaining opportunities to obtain any Chandler dedication.