The Thin Man
$65,000 · Offered by Biblio
First edition · Signed · In dust jacket
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. First Edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. First edition, first printing with "seep" for the word "sleep" at p. 209. Signed by Dashiell Hammett on the title page. [viii], 259 pp. Bound in publisher's green cloth with spine blocked in red and blue and blue mask motif to front board, plum topstain. Near Fine with light wear and irregular fading to cloth. Faint tidemark to top corner of preliminary sheets including the title page where Hammett signed, and contents lightly thumbed. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with very light sunning to spine panel, and light soiling and edgewear. Housed in a custom clamshell case. Layman A6.1.a. A fantastic signed copy of Dashiell Hammett's comic noir featuring the retired detective Nick Charles and his spirited wife Nora. Hammett found the writing hard going, though he had sprinted through his previous four novels, each one a success. His fourth mystery, The Glass Key, had been published in April 1931 and sold 11,000 copies in two weeks. Critics praised it as one of the best American detective novels ever written, and Dorothy Parker wrote in The New Yorker that the praise hadn't been high enough: "It seems to me that there is entirely too little screaming about the work of Dashiell Hammett. My own shrill yaps have been ascending since I first found Red Harvest, and from that day the man has been, God help me, my hero." The hero was struggling. Hammett had succumbed to writer's block and severe alcoholism, and h
- Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
- Year: 1934
- Edition: First Edition
- Printing: first
- Binding: unknown
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