The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts.

New York: The Viking Press, 1953. First edition of Miller's Tony Award-winning play, a bitter satire inspired by the heightened political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals during the McCarthy era. Octavo, original half cloth over patterned boards, top edge red. Association copy, inscribed by Arthur Miller on the front free endpaper to his mother and father, "To Mother & Dad With my love Arthur." Arthur Miller was the second of three children of Augusta (Barnett) and Isidore Miller. His father was born in Radomysl Wielki, Galicia (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Poland), and his mother was a native of New York whose parents had immigrated from the same town. Miller's father, Isidore, owned a women's clothing manufacturing business which employed over 400 people and the family lived on West 110th Street in Manhattan, owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens, and employed a chauffeur. In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Millers lost almost everything and were forced to move to Gravesend, Brooklyn where, as a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help with their finances. After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, Miller worked several jobs in order to pay for his college tuition at the University of Michigan where he would major in journalism. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket photograph by Gjon Mili. With a picture of Miller's parents laid in. From the library of Arthur Miller. An exceptional association copy on this landmark of twentieth century literature.