Special Advance Edition
Kindling.
New York: William Morrow, 1938.
Price: $375.00
About the item
Special Advance Edition. [4], 279 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Special Advance Edition. Pink wrappers printed in black, publisher letter on front. Lower wrapper perished, else very good plus. Smith, 39-42; Men at Work 4.2.b.
Item #322765
Published in London as Ruined City, the Morrow edition Kindling, was heavily promoted. Here in a Special Advance Edition, with the publisher’s circular letter on the front cover, “We hope to sell more copies of Kindling than any novel we have published since Lost Horizon. … We have unlimited confidence in Kindling as not only a fine and moving novel …” The spine announces the release date as late May or early June 1938.
“The novel quickly became Shute’s first commercial success, selling more than twenty thousand copies within its first six months in America” (Smith). Shute resigned from Airspeed in April 1938, and during the summer he learned that the film rights to Ruined City had sold. He never returned to engineering work.
