Hungry Hearts.

YEZIERSKA, Anzia.

$3,000.00

Item Number: 101233

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920.

First edition of Anzia Yezierska’s rare first book. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Mr. and Mrs. Love appreciatively yours Anzia Yezierska.” With an autographed letter signed from Yezierska tipped to the pastedown, dated February 25, 1921 on Metro-Goldwyn stationary, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Love at the Hayward Hotel in Los Angeles, thanking them profusely for their help, it reads, “I know I cannot put it into words, but I cannot help wanting to tell you how much both of you helped me yesterday. It would have taken a week of hard work for me to do what you helped me with in that one afternoon. The worst part of it is that I don’t feel guilty at having taken so many hours of your time because somehow I am glad to have taken that much help from you. Sincerely yours Anzia Yezierska.” Goldwyn hired Yezierska at an astronomical sum, based on the success of her stories in magazines, leading some in Hollywood to refer to her as the “sweatshop Cinderella.” A silent film, shot on location in NY’s Lower East Side, the setting of her stories of Jewish working-class life, was produced and distributed in 1922. By the mid-1920s, Yezierska had returned to New York from Hollywood. The Loves were probably screen writers or the silent film equivalent, who may have been teaching Yezierska the basics. Near fine in the rare original dust jacket with some chips and wear.

In stories that draw heavily on her own life, Anzia Yezierska portrays the immigrant's struggle to become a "real" American, in such stories as "Yekl," "Hunger," "The Fat of the Land," and "How I Found America." Set mostly in New York's Lower East Side, the stories brilliantly evoke the oppressive atmosphere of crowded streets and shabby tenements and lay bare the despair of families trapped in unspeakable poverty, working at demeaning jobs, and coping with the barely hidden prejudices of their new land.