8vo. Original green-gray cloth; in unrestored dust jacket (price-clipped, some light rubbing to extremities, tiny hole to spine-panel touching one letter). 

FIRST EDITION of the author's first book. "Today, when the war serves as a common excuse for hasty writing, it is more than ever exciting to come across a new author who has preserved his integrity. For this reason the Vanguard Press is especially proud to publish the first novel of a writer who, we predict, will take his place among the most distinguished novelists of our time" (front flap). Bellow would ultimately win 3 National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.