The Golden Spur

London: W.H. Allen, 1963. First UK. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. Dawn Powell (1896 - 1965) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer. Known for her acid-tongued prose, "her relative obscurity was likely due to a general distaste for her harsh satiric tone." Nonetheless, Stella Adler and author Clifford Odets appeared in one of her plays. Her work was praised by Robert Benchley in The New Yorker and in 1939 she was signed as a Scribner author where Maxwell Perkins, famous for his work with many of her contemporaries, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, became her editor. A 1963 nominee for the National Book Award, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Marjorie Peabody Waite Award for lifetime achievement in literature the following year. A friend to many literary and arts figures of her day, including author John Dos Passos, critic Edmund Wilson, and poet E.E. Cummings, Powell's work received renewed interest after Gore Vidal praised it in a 1987 editorial for The New York Review of Books. Since then, the Library of America has published two collections of her novels.

Powell's first editions, both US and UK editions, are relatively uncommon. This copy of the UK first is near fine in red cloth with gilt titles on the spine.  Very slight sunning at the top of the spine is the only issue.  No other marks or damage.  The unclipped DJ is also near fine, with just slight edge wear.

. TN.