8vo. Original black cloth stamped in light blue; dust jacket (spine lightly sunned, a touch of wear to extremities, some spotting to rear panel). Provenance: Roul Tunley, writer and ultimately an editor for the Saturday Evening Post (recipient of inscription and letter).

FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK, which is recognized as one of the great American novels of the Second World War. INSCRIBED BY BURNS in the year of publication: "For Roul Tunley, in the hope that he will turn from the slicks and grind out another Divinia [sic] Commedia, John Horne Burns, 17 Nov 47, Windsor, Conn."

[With:] Typed letter signed ("John Horne Burns"), to Mr. Tunley, Loomis School, Windsor, Conn., 27 October 1947. One page, 4to., old folds, small chip to margin. Burns compliments Tunley for the photographs Tunley had sent to Burns of the Galleria Umberto in Naples, which is featured on the book's dust jacket, telling Tunley, "I'm sorry I didn't know about them last year, for then would have had a byline on the jacket" (Two of these photos are also laid in.) Burns goes on to thank Tunley for his praise of the novel, and gives advice to the "incipient writer": "Practically everyone from whore to bishop imagines herself or himself producing at least one novel... the chief recipe is one which sounds almost nasty when it is put into basic English-you must get a typewriter and thousands of sheets of paper... Greater novels have been buried with people than have ever come from the press. Don't let yours do the same."