Presented by Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books.
Octavo. Original blue boards, spine lettered in silver. With the supplied dust jacket, designed by Fritz Wegner. Housed in a dark blue quarter morocco solander box made by the Chelsea Bindery. Boards browned at edges and a little marked, tips worn, a good copy in the jacket with chips at head of spine and folds.
First UK edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author in red ink on the front free endpaper, “To Joyce Williams, who nursed my mother so selflessly and beautifully. With gratitude, J. D. Salinger. New York, N.Y. June 21, 1974.” Salinger’s mother was born Marie Jillich, in 1891 in Atlantic, Cass County, Iowa, and died in June 1974, the same month as the inscription. She had adopted Judaism and the name Miriam on her marriage. Her husband Sol, Salinger’s father, had died earlier the same year, in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Apparently Salinger showed little emotional response to their deaths, even within his own family. He reported having dealt with his father’s death with a “minimum of crap and ceremony” and, when his mother died, he neglected to tell his own daughter Peggy; she read about it in the newspaper (Raychel Haugrud Reiff, J. D. Salinger, 2008, p. 35). This presentation inscription, made in a copy of the UK edition presumably from his own library, shows a little more emotional response to her passing. On the rear endpaper, Joyce Williams has re-presented the book: “To my brother Eric McBean. From his sister Joyce Williams. May 17, 2003. Brooklyn NY. 11233”.
