- 67
Yates, Richard
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
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Description
- Revolutionary Road. Boston: Little Brown, 1961
- paper, ink, cloth
8vo. Original cloth; spine faded with a few scuffs, some stray faint spots to endpapers. Publisher's dust jacket; fine.
Literature
Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (2003)
Catalogue Note
presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed to a girlfriend, "For Wendy Sears in the hope it won't make her too sad for too long Dick Yates 7/26/63."
Yates met Wendy Sears in 1963, when she was a 22-year-old secretary in the Public Information Office of the Department of Justice and he was working as a speechwriter for Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. They dated for about a year, but ultimately his volatile temperament and patronizing attitude drove them apart. They remained on good terms, however, and corresponded and occasionally met until his death.
A key post-war novel, rarely found with any meaningful association inscription and examples of truly personal presentations are seemingly especially scarce.