SHORT STORY 1 by YATES, Richard; BERRIAULT, Gina; EPSTEIN, Seymour; and BARRETT, B. L - (1958)

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (1958). First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine in a Good dustwrapper split where the spine meets the front cover but still fairly attractive under mylar. A collection of seven stories by Berriault preceding her first book by two years. Also four stories by Richard Yates, his first published collection of stories preceding his novel REVOLUTIONARY ROAD by three years. This copy is INSCRIBED and SIGNED by Yates on the title page of Yates's section to Barbara McCallum: "For Barbara/'If ever any beauty I did see/Which I desired, and got, 'twas/but a dream of thee.'/Dick (& J. Donne.)/12/16/60." These four writers were selected from a group of 250 in this first volume in a series meant to showcase promising young writers. With the label of Yates's agent, Monica McCall, on the front free endpaper.

In August 1960, Yates met Sweet Briar College student Barbara Singleton Beury at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, where Beury was a scholarship waitress. At that point, Yates was separated from his wife, Sheila, but not yet divorced, living in a basement apartment in New York City, teaching creative writing at the New School, and working to get his first novel, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, through to publication. He was dealing with his tremendous stress by drinking and smoking heavily, and ultimately suffered a nervous breakdown when Beury visited him in New York in early September, 1960. He spent Labor Day weekend in the Men's Violence Ward of Bellevue Hospital, and, after his release, began corresponding with Beury who visited a few times over the course of the coming months. Most visits went poorly, with Yates still in a deep depression and drinking heavily, and Beury gradually distanced herself from Yates completely breaking things off in 1961.