Tall 8vo. Original black buckram, gilt-lettered spine; dust jacket (spine heavily toned, a few tiny chips at ends); morocco-backed folding case.

FIRST EDITION IN THE RARE DUST JACKET. INSCRIBED BY WILLIAMS on the front free endpaper: "About my favorite prose stuff, William Carlos Williams, 11/14/50." In the American Grain was Williams's first book by a commercial publisher. Williams remarked once that he was "dancing in the air - because to that point nothing I was writing had any market: I had either paid for it myself or had it accepted for the most part, without pay" (Autobiography, pp.236-237). Wallace A9a.

[With:] autograph document signed ("W.C. Williams"), as M.D., 1p., oblong 16mo. WILLIAMS FILLS A SCRIPT FOR A PATIENT. Williams was a family doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey, for over 40 years. He often wrote between patient visits, seeing medicine and writing as two parts of helping people.