HAMMETT, Dashiell.
The Maltese Falcon.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1930.
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"The Holy Grail of Detective Fiction": Scarce First Edition of The Maltese Falcon; inscribed by Dashiell Hammett and in the Rare Original Dust Jacket
First edition of one of the earliest and most influential detective novels ever written. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "For Holly and Eric with my best regards Dashiell Hammett." The identities of Holly and Eric are unknown, but the latter is perhaps Eric Sutton, a prolific literary translator. Sutton began his career in the 1920s and translated the work of many important 20th-century writers, including B. Traven, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann, Hans Fallada, and Guy Mazaline. Hammett mentioned an unidentified Eric in a 3 November 1934 letter to Lillian Hellman, and would write later that month of reading Mazaline's The Wolves. Near fine in a near fine price-clipped first-issue dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Inscribed first editions of The Maltese Falcon are notoriously scarce; with only two copies traced at auction over the course of the past twenty five years, and only one of them in the coveted jacket.
Originally serialized in Black Mask Magazine in 1929, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is considered to be the first hard-boiled detective novel and the progenitor of the genre. The third-person narrative unfolds in San Francisco where private detective Sam Spade is hired to follow Floyd Thursday, the man who has run off with his client, Miss Wonderly's sister. Multiple shootings, romance, and intrigue prevail as Spade is led on a wild goose chase to secure the title object, a foot-high black statuette of unknown but substantial value. The novel was adapted for the screen four times, the third and best-known version, filmed in 1941, is considered to be a film-noir classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor.
The Maltese Falcon.
$175,000.00
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