The Prodigal Parents, A Novel. by Lewis, Sinclair - 1938

[i-viii]+[1]+301+[302-04] pages. Octavo (8" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's red cloth with gilt title and author's name on spine and embossed "SL" on cover in original jacket. (Pastore: 251) First state, limited to 10,000 copies with title page 1/4 inch shorter at bottom than surrounding leaves, corrected in later print run. Lewis had commented to several parties privately that Doubleday, Doran was putting too much focus on the Nobel Prize and too little on him. Word reached the publisher and the result was the addition of Lewis's initials to the olive branch motif on the cover of this and subsequent novels. The novel in an attack on the Communist left as a response the way It can't Happen Here was an attack on the totalitarian right; it deals with the "generation gap" and was soundly criticized by Lewis's former socialistic associates, Upton Sinclair, in particular, who vied the book as an apologia for middle-class values and mores, those same values and mores which Lewis had so well… Read More

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.. Very Good. 1938. First Edition. Hardcover in dust jacket. This book is hard-bound in red cloth with blind stamping on the upper cover and gilt stamping on the spine, in a nice dust jacket with light soiling/toning on the lower panel and wear/light chipping to the edges. The covers show a few faint scuffs, and light toning to the edges and spine. The binding is solid. The contents are bright and clean. --- From the American First Editions collection of Donald C. Scriven (1948-2019). Don relished points of issue and the primacy of the dust jacket but above all he loved the literature! .