8vo. Original grey-blue cloth, top edge stained orange (a touch of toning near top edge of covers, hinges a bit tender); dust jacket (light edgewear, few cellotape repairs near edge verso).

FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK. INSCRIBED BY HELLER IN THE MONTH OF PUBLICATION: "To Maurice Dempsey [sic]- Sincerely with all best wishes, and with grateful appreciation for a very pleasant association. Joe Heller, October 19, 1961, McCall's." Heller wrote Catch-22 in his spare time while working as a promotion manager at McCall's magazine. He began the novel in 1953 and spent eight years completing it before its publication in 1961.

The title of this contemporary American novel has entered the language more seamlessly than any other. However, "Catch 22" was not the book's original title. In the late '50s, when a chapter was published in the anthology New American Writing, Heller was calling the novel "Catch 18." He only changed it to Catch-22 the following year when Leon Uris published his bestselling World War II novel Milo 18, beating Heller to the number and begetting a cliché destined to be with us for decades to come. Burgess, 99 Novels, 79.

[With:] Autograph postcard signed ("Joseph Heller") to Al Shams, New York City, 9 June 1977. 1p., oblong 32mo, addressed and postmarked. HELLER ON THE TITLE CHANGE OF CATCH-22. "Coincidence was the cause of the change. Mila 18, a novel by Leon Uris, was scheduled to be published a month before mine, + it's hard enough to introduce a first novel (mine) without that unnecessary confusion. The new title came from Robert Gottleib after days of melancholy searching. I took to it immediately + prefer it because of its correspondence to the structure + certain events in the book. Okay? Joseph Heller."