Appointment in Samarra. by O'HARA, John - 1934

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,, 1934. A remarkable copy of the book that launched his career First edition, first printing, in a sparkling example of the first issue dust jacket, with its rear panel listing "Recent Fiction" rather than printing reviews of the work. The cover art is after Alfred Maurer (1868-1932), an American painter of the first rank who experimented with abstractionism, bold colours, and Fauvist landscapes. Critics such as Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker lauded O'Hara's breakthrough novel. The latter called it "a fine and serious American novel, of shrewd and inevitable pattern and almost unbelievable pace. This swift savage story of Julian English's life, and the lives of those who crowd his way, set down as sharp and deep as if the author had used steel for paper" (cited in Bruccoli, pp. 109-10). Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket by Alfred Maurer. Publisher's tipped-in advertisement for W. Somerset Maugham's play Sheppey (1934), which provides the title page's epigraph. Negligible bumps to cloth, faint browning to free endpapers from previous jacket protector, tiny mark on title page; unclipped jacket with a couple of nicks, notably sharp overall: a fine copy in fine jacket. Matthew J. Bruccoli, The O'Hara Concern: A Biography of John O'Hara, 1975.