[Rarebooks] FS: James Agee's copy of Elmer Gantry

[Charles Agvent]

 From our upcoming annual Summer Miscellany Catalogue due to be posted on our 
home page this week.  It will contain a variety of fine and unusual items, 
including interesting Americana, Autographs, Illustrated Books, uncommon Modern 
First Editions, and the unusual and unexpected, such as this:

[AGEE, James] LEWIS, Sinclair. ELMER GANTRY [James Agee's copy  at
Phillips  Exeter Academy dated March 1927]. New York: Harcourt,  Brace
and  Company  (1927).  A  later printing,  ex-library  copy  with  the
bookplate  of  The  Phillips  Exeter  Academy  library  on  the  front
pastedown, stamped DISCARDED, of a book made into a film starring Burt
Lancaster that won three Academy Awards.  An undistinguished copy  BUT
for  the  fact that it belonged to James Agee with his SIGNATURE  "J R
Agee"  dated March 1927 on the front free endpaper.  This  copy  later
belonged  to  Henry Darcy Curwen, of the Exeter English  faculty,  who
signed  his name below Agee's. In March 1927, Agee, at age 17, was  in
his  "upper-middle"  year (junior) at Exeter, an admirer  of  Sinclair
Lewis,  and  already committed to a literary career, submitting  poems
and  stories  to the  Phillips Exeter Monthly.  In one  of  his  early
letters  to  Father Flye (LETTERS OF JAMES AGEE TO FATHER FLYE,  pages
27-28)  dated Exeter 17 March 1927, Agee writes: "I've bought and read
Elmer Gantry, the Lewis satire on religion.  It's very  disappointing,
although excellent in spots.  He's turning rancid." Reflecting his own
psychological  unease at the time, Agee soon expands this somewhat  in
one  of  his earliest published critical articles, a review  of  ELMER
GANTRY  in  the  Phillips  Exeter Monthly 31 (May 1927):  "It  is  one
gigantic  crescendo  of walloping filthiness, and I have  the  feeling
that  it carried Mr. Lewis before it, and left him stranded where  not
even  himself can work his salvation."  Early signed Agee material  is
uncommon,  and the important resonance of this copy with his beginning
literary  efforts can  hardly be exaggerated.  Good copy, lacking  the
dustwrapper.  An Agee rarity!                                 $2000.00

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and 19th Century Literary First Editions, Autographed Books, and Limited 
Editions Club books.  We are proud to be members of the Antiquarian Booksellers 
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Booksellers (ILAB) as well as the Manuscript Society and the Universal Autograph 
Collectors Club (UACC).  Please feel free to contact us with any wants or 
offerings.  Thank you.

CHARLES AGVENT
291 Linden Road
Mertztown, PA  19539-8750
Voice/Fax: 610-682-4750
agvent at erols.com
Visit our home page:  http://www.erols.com/agvent