FIRE AND ICE

New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941. First edition, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED by Wallace Stegner. 8vo, publisher’s original blue boards, lettered in white on the spine, in the original dustjacket. 214 pp. A near fine copy with only a hint of wear to the spine edges and with a jacket that is complete with inoffensive evidence of shelf wear to its edges. AN EXCELLENT COPY OF THIS RARE AND INSCRIBED STEGNER TITLE. The central figure in the novel is a fierce rebel, who is working his way through college, and who is more than ready to take arms against the injustice of the world he knows. He becomes desperately attracted to a girl of wealth and beauty who represents everything that he has forced himself to reject and disdain.
The inscription is for Virginia, a close friend of Stegner and his "favorite reader". He signs very familiarly as "Wally".
Stegner was a professor at Harvard when he wrote this book. Virginia was a friend at Harvard during the same time as Stegner's stint at the university. His REMEMBERING LAUGHTER was issued in 1937 to critical acclaim. It won the Little, Brown contest and was followed by ON A DARKLING PLAIN. It is said of FIRE AND ICE the the pace of Stegner's narrative is more beautifully calculated than ever before and his feeling for word and phrase more acute.
Inscribed copies of this early work are very scarce indeed.