The Exorcist.

BLATTY, William Peter.

$2,800.00

Item Number: 147119

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971.

First edition of Blatty’s landmark horror novel, basis for the 1973 film. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by William Peter Blatty and actress Kitty Winn, who starred in the film on the front free endpaper. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Frederick Cantor. An exceptional example, rare and desirable signed the author and Winn.

William Peter Blatty's novel "took the horror genre out of the specialist category and into the bestseller racks" (Horror 100 Best 68) and is considered "a landmark of modern horror fiction that grounds the classic battle between Good and Evil in the generation gap of the 1960s and explores the incongruity of religious faith in the modern secular world" (Fantasy and Horror 6-36). "An intelligent exploration of possession and exorcism… an intense and dark theodicy. The screen version [released 1973], with its realistic and shocking effects, transformed the horror movie and revived the moribund horror fiction market" (Clute & Grant, 119). The 1973 film version, directed by William Friedkin, starred Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, and Linda Blair.