Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction

New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1963. Full Description:

SALINGER, J.D. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction. New York: Little, Brown and Company. [1963].

First edition, the rare first issue without the dedication page. And with "Seymore" on p. 173 uncorrected. Octavo (8 x 5 3/8 inches; 202 x 134 mm). [vi], 248, [2, blank] pp. In publisher's dust jacket.

Original gray cloth, gilt-stamped spine, dust jacket. Near fine in rubbed jacket with light soiling and some minor chipping.

Original grey cloth. Spine lettered in gilt. In dust jacket. Jacket very lightly rubbed, mainly along spine edge, and some light wear to head and tail of jacket spine. One short closed tear on bottom edge of back panel. A bright, fine copy of the book in an about fine jacket. Housed in a custom quarter green calf clamshell.

The two stories included in this volume were originally published in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1959, respectively. It was the third-best selling novel published in the United States in 1963.

This is the true first edition in which only a couple dozen copies or so were reported to have left the publisher without the dedication page. When Salinger found out that 100,000 copies were printed without the dedication page, he insisted the publisher insert dedication pages. According to Kenneth Starosciak in his bibliography J. D. Salinger, A Thirty Year Bibliography 1938-1968 (Saint Paul, 1971), there are roughly thirty copies without the dedication page, making this one of the rarest Salinger titles available.

Starosciak, A42. Bixby, A5a; Bruccoli & Clark, I:315.

HBS 69272.

$850. (Inventory #: 69272)