The Good Earth.

BUCK, Pearl S.

$20,000.00

Item Number: 80122

New York: John Day, 1931.

First edition, first issue with “flees” for “fleas” on page 100, line 17 of the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and masterpiece. Octavo, original brown cloth, illustrated endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed and dated by Pearl Buck on the half-title page. Buck also underlined the error “flees” on page 100, and marked it with an arrow on the left margin. It is interesting to note that Buck knew the first issue points and makes note of it. Near fine in the original dust jacket with some tape repairs to the verso. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. Signed and inscribed examples of the first edition in the original dust jacket are rare.

Though nearly eighty years have passed since this novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In The Good Earth she presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who want to fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.