Williwaw

First edition. 8vo. 222pp. Black cloth boards, lettered in blue to spine and front. Black top-stain (now faded). Illustrated dustwrapper with author's photo portrait to rear panel (priced $2.50 to front flap). One of 5000 copies printed.

Cloth rubbed along extremities, some crimping at crown and tail of spine. Jacket with chipping at spine ends, water-stained along backstrip fold, creasing to top and bottom of front cover. Adrian Liddell Hart's bookplate to front paste-down endpaper with his ownership inscription to front free endpaper. [He was a British soldier, Royal Navy officer, author and adventurer, whose correspondence with the author is now kept amongst the latter's papers at Harvard].

Author's first book. A quasi-autobiographical novel, Williwaw was written at the age of 19 while Vidal was first mate of a U.S. Army freight supply ship stationed in the Aleutian Islands.