Raintree County

Ross Lockridge Jr.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press, Boston, 1948

About this Item

Stated Third Impression. The first impression was published in December 1947. The second and third impressions were published in January 1948. That's all on the copyright page. Once listed, this will be the Only third impression of the novel on this website. There is no second impression for sale either. There are number of first editions for sale, some appear to be genuine, others not so much. Curiously, all the first editions have 1948 as the date of publishing. I'm not sure what to make of that. My guess would be that despite the fact that there is this reference to December 1947 as the date of the first edition being published, it was actually not released until January or released with 1948 as the date of publication. There are also a lot of book club editions around. A dot on the rear cover of the book indicates such. My book does not have such a dot. You can see the covers in the photos. In the main, they are quite clean. On the front cover there is a very light impression of a circle, a cup was clearly left sitting there. On the rear cover there is a etched impression that some sort bump must've created. The area that is creased is white. You can see it in the third photo. Also there is a light discoloration just adjacent to the middle edge coming down from the top edge and ending just a little bit below this white crease. Other wear includes some crinkling and bending at the spine ends and, actually that's it. The six edges of the covers are in solid shape. So are the corners. There are tiny bump/dents just above the bottom corners. The top page edge is a light red. All three page edges are clean. The book is pretty square and the spine is pretty straight. There is a slight jiggle in the book if you push it back and forth from the side, but the binding is quite good throughout. I'm not seeing any issues with the binding between the covers and end papers or between the covers and any other pages, and the pages in the book are very nicely and tightly bound, all of them. The inside covers and end papers share the same illustrations. They are all in good shape. There's a little crease at the bottom corner of the inside covers. The pages are exceptionally clean. I'm scrolling through them and not finding any conspicuous soiling. Very clean pages. There are no placeholder creases, but there are those light creases you see from bumps as opposed to turned-down corners. Except for four consecutive pages where there is a tiny crease at the top corner, all of these light creases are on the bottom corners where the bumps to both the front and rear bottom corners of the covers occurred. There are no markings in the book. No attachments. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. It's a nice-looking book, younger looking then at years. 'Raintree County is a novel by Ross Lockridge, Jr. published in 1948. It tells the story of a small-town Midwestern teacher and poet named John Shawnessy, who, in his younger days before his service as a Union soldier in the Civil War, met and married a beautiful Southern belle; however, her emotional instability leads to the destruction of their marriage. The novel, set in fictional Raintree County, Indiana, is essentially in two parts; before the Civil War and after. It spans the 19th century history of the United States, from the pre-Civil War westward expansion, to the debate over slavery, to the Civil War, to the Industrial Revolution and the Labor Movement which followed. The book is often surreal, with dream sequences, flashbacks and departures from the linear narrative. It has been described as an effort to mythologize the history of America which to a great degree it succeeds in doing through the eyes and the commentary of its protagonist John Shawnessy. It is a long novel, around 400,000 words. Most editions run to about 1000 pages. The fictional town of Waycross was based on Straughn, Indiana and the fictional Raintree County was based on Henry County, Indiana.'. Seller Inventory # 003910

Bibliographic Details

Title: Raintree County

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press, Boston

Publication Date: 1948

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good