Item #256 Ship of Fools. Katherine Anne Porter.
Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools

Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1962. First Edition. VG+ (spine weakening) in a VG+ unclipped dustjacket with some light chipping to head of spine. First novel by the oft-divorced Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, made into a successful film three years later that marked the final screen appearance of Vivien Leigh. Alexander Laing’s copy, with his ownership SIGNATURE on half-title page—“Veronica & Alexander Laing 4 April 1962.” Laing is probably best known for his science fiction and horror writing and editing in the 1930s, including The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (1934), Dr. Scarlett (1936), The Methods of Dr. Scarlett (1937), and The Haunted Omnibus (1937). The year before Porter’s Ship of Fools, Laing, who sailed around the world in 1934-1935, published American Sail: A Pictorial History. The University of Maryland, which houses Porter’s papers, lists Laing’s work among her documents from 1943, thus showing that Porter was aware of Laing’s early writing on the sea, most likely his novel of the golden age of shipping, The Sea Witch (1933). Item #256

Price: $175.00

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