8vo. Original silver-stamped black cloth; publisher’s blue and purple pictorial dust jacket designed by W. A. Dwiggins. Provenance: Harry Orrick Buzby (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION of Cain’s second novel, the follow-up to his The  Postman Always Rings Twice. Serenade, which has been called “Cain’s finest piece of sustained writing,” is loosely based on Bizet’s Carmen, and explores the sources of artistic development.  It was adapted to film in 1956, though the plot was largely watered down to suppress homosexual themes present in the novel.