A Confederacy of Dunces [First Edition, Seventh Printing]

Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. 1980 at title page and copyright page. Stated: "Seventh Printing (June, 1981). Tan with greenish tint, full cloth boards, black stylized spine titles, fine. Pages fine; no writing. Bind fine, square; remains tightly bound and relatively as new. Dust wrapper, fine; unclipped 12.95, protected in new clear sleeve. Matches first printing in design and quality with classic Ed Lindloff wrapper illustration; identical to the third printing with Chicago Sun-Times blurb at back jacket panel. Sadly, the author, John Kennedy Toole, took his own life at 32, after facing consistent rejection from nearly every American publisher. Toole's mother, finally was able to have her son's work posthumously published; and, as fate would have it, the satirical novel won the Pulitzer Prize. "A masterwork of comedy... pungent slapstick, sature and intellectual incongruities... make for a grand comic fugue" (New York Time). Presented here is "a great slob of a man in violent revolt against the entire twentieth century!" This book's unusual path to success began in 1976 when John Kennedy Toole's mother Thelma, using a walker, hobbled into the office of novelist Walker Percy at Loyola University. She was followed by a chauffeur carrying a manuscript that she told Mr. Percy was a ''masterpiece''. Percy reluctantly agreed to read it. He became entranced as he read, and decided that the novel was ''a major achievement, a huge comic-satiric-tragic one-of-a-kind rendering of life in New Orleans.'' After several more publishers rejected the book, Louisiana State University Press agreed to take a chance with a first printing of only 2,500. The soon to be Pulitzer Prize winner went on to 50,000 copies in hard cover and nearly 600,000 in paperback within three years. Manufactured in the United States of America. 338 pages. Insured post.. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Illus. by Lindlof, Ed (Wrapper Illustration). 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" Tall.