The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales.
CARTER, Forrest.
The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales.
First Edition of Forrest Carter's The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales
Ganit, Alabama: Whipporwill Publishers, 1973.
$3,200.00
In Stock
Item Number: 148846
First edition of this Western novel, adapted into the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales by Clint Eastwood. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. One of only 75 copies of the true first edition. Near fine in a good dust jacket with a loss to the top of the front jacket panel. Accompanied by a photographic print laid in of Fletcher Taylor, and infamous outlaws Frank and Jesse James. Ownership signatures to the front free endpaper. A rare and scarce example.
The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1973), later republished as Gone to Texas, is a Western novel by Forrest Carter that tells the story of a Confederate guerrilla turned fugitive seeking peace in post–Civil War America. Blending themes of vengeance, redemption, and frontier justice, the novel gained widespread attention when Clint Eastwood purchased the film rights and adapted it into The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), in which he also starred and directed. The film closely follows the novel’s narrative, with Eastwood portraying the stoic, gun-slinging Josey Wales, supported by actors such as Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, and Bill McKinney. Eastwood’s acquisition of the rights followed a dispute between Carter and the original director, Philip Kaufman, whom Eastwood replaced—an unusual move that led to a significant Directors Guild controversy. Despite its controversial origins and the later exposure of Carter’s fabricated identity and segregationist past, both the novel and the film remain celebrated for their mythic portrayal of individualism and moral complexity in the American West.
