The author's landmark first novel and truly one of the great American novels. Salinger spent the rest of his career trying to live up to this extraordinary 'coming-of-age' novels. Copies in this condition are of the utmost scarcity.

First edition, first printing; 8vo; publisher's black cloth, design and titles to spine gilt; with the pictorial dust jacket, contemporary ownership signature to front free endpaper, text block just a touch 'sagged' as often but a bright, sharp copy in the spectacular dust jacket, one of two tiny nicks at the head of the spine panel, a very short tear at the bottom of the lower panel with a small associated scuff just effecting the image but a remarkably good copy of a book almost never found in anything approaching this condition; preserved in a red buckram slip-case very similar to the boxes made for the famous Goodwin collection of modern American literature.