The Adventures of Augie March.

BELLOW, Saul.

$3,800.00

Item Number: 111689

New York: The Viking Press, 1953.

First edition of Bellow’s first National Book Award winning novel. Octavo, original cloth, salmon topstain. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Ann Englander whom I protected from the angry wolves Saul Bellow.” Fine in a near fine price-clipped first-issue dust jacket with the John Steinbeck ad on the rear flap and no reviews. Jacket design by Robert Hallock. An exceptional example.

The Adventures of Augie March comes on stage with one of literature's most famous opening lines. "I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted." Bellow quickly found a receptive audience for his new energetic style. The critic Irving Howe took note of Bellow's "free style" manner, calling it "the first major new style in American prose fiction since those of Hemingway and Faulkner." This novel went on to win the National Book Award for 1954. Both Time Magazine and the Modern Library Board named it one of the hundred best novels in the English language.