The Wapshot Chronicle.
First Edition of John Cheever's The Wapshot Chronicle
The Wapshot Chronicle.
CHEEVER, John.
$400.00
Item Number: 125758
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.
First edition of the author’s classic work. Octavo, original half cloth. Fine in a good dust jacket.
When The Wapshot Chronicle was published in 1957, John Cheever was already recognized as a writer of superb short stories. But The Wapshot Chronicle, which won the 1958 National Book Award, established him as a major novelist. Based in part on Cheever’s adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses’ adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the tradition of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James. Named by Modern Library as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.