Guys and Dolls
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1931.
First edition, first printing. xii, 313 pp. Bound in publisher's red cloth lettered in black; lacking the dust jacket. Good+ with lean and sunning to spine, general wear and grubbiness, edges foxed. Bookplate to front pastedown, tiny ink initials to back free endpaper Hinges tender, amateur repair to rear hinge.
A much-read first edition of Runyon's collected short stories about colorful characters of the Roaring Twenties. Runyon was a roving journalist and gambler who associated freely with kind of people he wrote about — people who went by nicknames like Big Butch and Izzy Cheesecake. Two of the stories from this collection were the basis for the enormously popular Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. The 1955 film version, starring Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando, won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture.
Price: $1,800