Whither

POWELL, Dawn

Published by Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, 1925

About this Item

First edition. Spine lettering a little tarnished and very light wear at the spine ends, else near fine in attractive, very good, price-clipped dustwrapper (with jacket art by Harold Cue), a couple of nicks and tears, and a modest crease on the spine from being slightly misfolded. Inscribed by Powell within a couple of weeks of publication (the book was issued in late February): "To a charming gentleman - , Dawn Powell, March 11 - 1925. New York." Powell's rare first novel, a blatantly autobiographical novel about a small-town girl in her twenties from the Midwest aspiring to become a writer in New York, haunting Greenwich Village, drinking in speakeasies, finding romance and success, and finally fitted up at the conclusion with an uncharacteristic and unbelievable happy ending. According to biographer Tim Page: "Powell disavowed the book almost immediately, well before her second novel *She Walks in Beauty*, was promoted as her debut in 1928. Thereafter, she refused even to acknowledge *Whither* in her biography or in lists of her publications.she.was quite put out when her young friend Hannah Green found a copy in a secondhand bookstore in the early 1960s." Powell later went out of her way to purchase and destroy copies, which may be why this is only the second jacketed copy, and the only Inscribed copy, that we've seen. *OCLC* cites 10 locations (how many have jackets we don't know), copies are seldom seen in the trade. A true rarity: an inscribed copy of the spurned first novel of an iconic New York writer, in the pretty near impossible jacket. Seller Inventory # 584023

Bibliographic Details

Title: Whither

Publisher: Small, Maynard & Company, Boston

Publication Date: 1925

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition