HELLER, Joseph.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Catch-22. First edition, advance reader's issue, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Michael Broomfield, with good wishes, Joseph Heller". Broomfield was a collector and bibliographer of the works of John Updike and Robinson Jeffers. It is rare to find signed examples of the first issuance of Heller's great novel.Noting "to be published October 10, 1961", the publisher's advance wrappers advertise Catch-22 as "a funny and tragic and tonic book that says what is on the tip of the tongue of our age to say". The front wrapper utilises the title font and illustration seen on the dust jacket of the trade issue. Based on Heller's wartime experiences in the United States Army Air Corps, the novel is a classic of both satire and anti-war literature. It has also influenced the English lexicon, as the work's title is now widely understood as describing a paradoxical or impossible situation.

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