The Jungle
New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906.
First edition, second issue with battered type on the copyright page. Signed by Upton Sinclair on the front free endpaper, inscribed to one H.M. Meyer. [viii], 413 pp. Bound in publisher's green cloth with pictorial stamping in black and white. Very Good with dulled spine, edge-rubbed and a little bumped, rear hinge starting and tender, bookseller ticket to front pastedown. Lacking the dust jacket.
A signed copy of one of the most famous American novels of the 20th century. Upton Sinclair defied Bismarck's famous admonition not to look too closely at how a sausage gets made and spent seven weeks investigating Chicago's stockyards. He turned what he saw into this fictionalized expose of the stockyards' gruesome meat-processing practices and working conditions. The Jungle was an internationally influential bestseller, but Sinclair's middle-class readers cared more about the quality of their meat than the plight of the working class. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act just four months after the book was published, but wage-slavery remained in full effect. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” wrote Sinclair, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
Price: $5,250