8vo. Original green cloth stamped in red and tan, spine gilt-lettered, top edge green, others uncut (light rubbing to extremities, spine slightly darkened). Provenance: A.R. Howard? (stamped signature); acquired Hamill & Barker.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE with  “eye” and “so pretty” on p.245, and “brain of Zeus” on p. 342. IN EARLIEST BINDING with the ear of corn on the spine pointing up. Tarkington’s first novel.

[Laid in:] TARKINGTON. Autograph letter signed (“Booth Tarkington”), to Mrs. Charles A. Evers. Indianapolis, Indiana, 16 June 1899. 4 pages, 8vo, creasing and light toning. Responding to Evers’ request for an autograph, one of the first he ever received: “Yours is the first and only request of that kind I have received and I confess, without caution, that I am in a state of painful anxiety lest it prove also the last…” --  Self-portrait of Booth Tarkington drawn in pencil, signed (“Booth Tarkington”). Indianapolis, Indiana, 1903. 1 page (one leaf), 8vo, on wove paper, some spotting.