The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life.

PRESSFIELD, Steven.

Item Number: 115988

New York: William Morrow and Company, 1995.

First edition of one of the greatest golf novels of the 20th century. Octavo, original half cloth. Association copy, with a full page inscription signed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “For Frank, A book by a first-time writer needs a lot of friends along the rocky road from manuscript to publication. You were one of “BAGGER VANCE’s” earliest and most helpful. I want to thank you for your enthusiasm and your assistance, particularly since you and I have never met (yet) and you had nothing but the book and your own kindness and generosity to go on. Hardy and Jouzle thank you, Bagger Vance thanks you, and I thank you too. All my best, Steven Pressfield 4/19/95.” The recipient, Frank Bennack, served as CEO and president of Hearst Communications from 1979 to 2002, when he became vice chairman, returning as CEO from 2008 to 2013. Laid in is an additional autograph note signed by Pressfield to Bennack and an typed letter signed to him by Editor-at-large of the Hearst Book Group Lawrence Hughes. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Richard Grider. Jacket illustration by Jerry LoFaro. An exceptional association.

Loosely based on the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita and set in the midst of the Great Depression, Pressfield's The Legend of Bagger Vance tells the story of a 36-hole showdown between Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, and a a troubled local war hero named R. Junuh with a mysterious mentor and caddie, Bagger Vance. The book was adapted into a film of the same name directed by Robert Redford, starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron.