The Adventures of Augie March.

BELLOW, Saul.

Item Number: 1422

New York: Viking Press, 1953.

First edition. Octavo, original cloth. Fine with the salmon topstain bright in an excellent first issue dust jacket that shows some usual wear to the spine. Signed by the author on the title page.

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 and was listed on Modern Library's 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.