A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahay, 1956. First Edition. Cloth and boards. Fine/Very Good. SIGNED PRESENTATION by the AUTHOR, 8vo, yellow quarter cloth with green lettering over blue-gray lettered boards, archival mylar-protected photographic dust jacket (unclipped front flap with price $4.50) depicting the author in a shadowy alley, [vi] + [1] 3-346 pages. Nelson Algren (1909 - 1981) was an American writer known for his Chicago affiliation. He is well known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1949 novel about drug additction that won the National Book Award, and was adapted as a 1955 film of the same name starring Frank Sinatra.<br /> <br /> According to one prominent critic, "in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Algren was one of the best known literary writers in America." He was also the lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir, he was featured in her novel The Mandarins, set in Paris and Chicago.<br /> <br /> He is considered "a bard of the down-and-outer," based largely on his gritty novels. In 1956, Algren had his last major success with the novel A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE. He reworked some material from his first novel, The Man With The Golden Arm, and added elements from most notably his short story "The Face on the Barroom Floor" (1947). A Walk on the Wild Side was about a wandering Texan adrift during the early years of the Great Depression. It was adapted as a Broadway play and for the 1962 movie of the same name.<br /> <br /> SUPERIOR COPY INSCRIBED on its free front endpaper: clean, bright, tight with a bright dust jacket having only a few clean nicks, large triangular chip [~ 1.75 x 1.5"] lost to lower rear corner of the dj's rear flap, and minor rubbing to its extremities.