McCULLERS, Carson (1917?1967). The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940. 8vo. Original publisher?s beige buckram lettered in dark red; original unclipped dust jacket (spine gently sunned, tiny spot of chipping near head, short closed tear to front flap, few faint surface abrasions to front panel, tiny pen mark also to front panel); folding morocco?backed box. FIRST EDITION of the author?s first book. ?No matter what the age of the author, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter would be a remarkable book. When one reads that Carson McCullers is a girl of 22 it becomes? something beyond that, something more akin to the vocation of pain to which a great poet is born? (New York Times, Carson at 100). INSCRIBED BY McCULLERS on front free endpaper: ?For Gene Andrewsky (sp.) / with all good wishes / Carson McCullers?. Andrewski was an editor for the literary magazine The Paris Review and a major collector of cinema and autographs. Inscribed copies of this title are rare on the market with the first and only copy selling in the rooms at Christies 27 September 1995. Bruccoli & Clark II, p. 251.