Carrie.

KING, Stephen.

$9,500.00

Item Number: 147126

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1974.

First edition of the novel that launched King’s career, with ‘First Edition’ stated on the copyright page and ‘P6’ in the gutter of page 199. Octavo, original maroon cloth, compliments stamp to the front pastedown, “With Compliments of Doubleday & Company, Inc.” Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the title page, “For Bobby Richardson – Thanks for the neat baseball cards. Say – you didn’t ever play ball with the Yankees, didja? (Just joking) – Stephen King 3/7/90.” The recipient, Bobby Richardson played for the New York Yankees from 1955 through 1966, winning five straight Gold Glove Awards at second base and racking up 1,432 hits in his career. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design and author photograph by Alex Gotfryd.

Carrie inaugurated King’s reign as “the best-selling American author during the final quarter of the 20th century” (Chronology of American Literature). When King began writing the book, however, he was living in a trailer and working at a laundromat for $60 a week. “Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together… I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away… [The next night, my wife] Tabby had the pages… ‘You’ve got something here,’ she said. ‘I really think you do” (King, On Writing, 67-68). Tabitha King was right. “Life in the trailer ended in 1973 when Doubleday bought Carrie for a $2500 advance. Hardcover sales were not spectacular, but the paperback sales-boosted by the [1976] film of the novel-were nearly 4,000,000 copies. ‘The movie made the book, and the book made me,’ King says” (New York Times).