Burroughs, William S. (“William Lee”) (1914-1997). Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict. New York: Ace Double Books, 1953.

12mo. (Contents evenly toned as usual.) Original color pictorial wrappers (some light edgewear and short creases). Provenance: S. Clay Wilson (1941-2021), American underground cartoonist (ownership inscription on the title-page, "S. Clay Wilson. First Day of Spring-1995"; recipient of author's inscription).

FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY BURROUGHS on the title-page: “For S. Clay Wilson, old friend and collaborator, William S. Burroughs, March 15, 1995”. Burroughs’s first book of his notorious semi-autobiographical novel of heroin addiction, which “tells us more about heroin use during the wartime and immediate postwar 1940s than any other volume; millions have read it since its original publication” (Dope Menace, p. 54). Bound dos-a-dos with Maurice Helbrandt’s Narcotic Agent.

S. Clay Wilson, along with Robert Crumb and other artists, was a founding contributor to Zap Comix, the influential underground comix anthology that emerged in San Francisco in the late 1960s and helped define the countercultural comics movement. Wilson’s work was notorious for its confrontational style, combining explicit violence, sexual imagery, and grotesque satire, pushing the boundaries of what comics could depict and helping to establish the raw aesthetic associated with underground comix. Beyond his contributions to Zap, Wilson also illustrated the German-language editions of Cities of the Red Night and The Wild Boys by William Burroughs. Maynard & Miles A1a.

This lot is located in Chicago.

Burroughs, William S. (“William Lee”) (1914-1997). Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict. New York: Ace Double Books, 1953.