THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950. First Edition. A significant collection, containing 12 of Chandler's short stories which first appeared in the pages of Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Saturday Review of Literature. Includes Chandler's oft-quoted and much-anthologized essay "The Simple Art of Murder," which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (1944). A superb copy of this Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone title. Bruccoli A9.1.a; Hubin, p.76. First Printing, one of 8,000 copies. Octavo (21cm); beige cloth, with titling and decorations stamped in tan and pale yellow; yellowish-brown topstain; dustjacket; x,533,[1]pp. Subtle tanning to upper and lower board edges, with lower board corners imperceptibly tapped; contemporary rubber-stamped price to rear endpaper, else clean throughout; Near Fine. In the dustjacket designed by Boris Artzybasheff, unclipped (priced $3.50), with some trivial wear to extremities, a faint vertical crease to front flap, a handful of closed tears, and a tiny splash mark to front panel (visible only on verso); an unrestored, Very Good+ to Near Fine example, showing no trace of fading to the spine panel found in even the best of copies.