TYPESCRIPT (Sinclair's Own Working Ribbon Copy) of WIDE IS THE GATE

[New York]: [Viking Press], [1943]. First Edition. Manuscript. Last page torn, not affecting text. Near Fine. Complete text, 1034 pages continuously numbered with variations; numbered consecutively by chapters. Placed into three large binders. Sinclair's own working copy, apparently a second draft and first complete early copy to be located. Extensive pencil annotations by the author with thousands of corrections, deletions, and additions to the text, from single words to entire pages. Many revisions greatly differ from the published novel. For instance, at the end of the first paragraph after describing Lanny Budd's inner convictions--"...that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of Hosts"--Sinclair has added, then crossed out: "For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot." After a narrow defeat in a bitter campaign for the California governorship in 1934, Sinclair created Lanny Budd, "America's self-diagnosed schizophrenic liberal," the hero of the novels that came to reflect Sinclair's disillusionment and cynicism. This is the fourth in the series of eleven novels about Lanny Budd, the third--DRAGON'S TEETH--having won the Pulitzer Prize. Sinclair considered this series the most important part of his literary production, which also included, of course, THE JUNGLE. When reviewing the Budd series, Perry Miller declared that "the character of Lanny Budd is surely one of the most fabulous creations of our time. Possessing the insouciance of d'Artagnan, the penetration of Sherlock Holmes, the sartorial elegance of Beau Brummel, the gymnastic skill of the late Douglas Fairbanks, the ubiquity of Superman ... the sociological profundity of Herbert Spencer ... [and] the sexual prowess of a Casanova."