The Catcher In The Rye.

SALINGER, J.D.

Item Number: 97989

Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1951.

First edition of Salinger’s first book. Octavo, bound in full morocco, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, raised bands, marbled endpapers, gilt ruled to the front and rear panels, original spine bound in the rear of the book. In fine condition. A nice example.

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher In the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins, "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."