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F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD inscribed first edition first printing TENDER IS THE NIGHT first state dust jacket Kent Curtis 1934
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
THE TIRED CAPTAINS by Kent Curtis, Appleton 1928, first edition inscribed by Curtis original dust jacket
Kent Curtis, aviator, author, outdoorsman, Camp Mishawaka, Minnesota director

F. Scott Fitzgerald Inscribed First Edition Tender Is the Night 1934 | Colorado Artifactual

$150,000.00

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Description

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. Tender Is the Night. First Edition, First Printing, in First-State Dust Jacket. Scribner’s, 1934.

Inscribed by F. Scott Fitzgerald on the front flyleaf to Kent Curtis — a friendship documented not by the inscription alone, but by an archive of Fitzgerald’s own letters.

One of 7,600 copies printed April 12, 1934 (Bruccoli A 15.I.a), dedicated by Fitzgerald to Gerald and Sara Murphy, the expatriate couple who befriended the Fitzgeralds on the French Riviera in the 1920s. The dust jacket is first state, with front-flap reviews by T. S. Eliot, H. L. Mencken, and Paul Rosenfeld, and the original $2.50 price intact.

Provenance

Kent Curtis (1890–1957) — American author, illustrator, World War I aviator, and longtime director of Camp Mishawaka in Minnesota — met Fitzgerald in Paris during the 1920s, where the two shared both a home state and an expatriate literary circle that included Sinclair Lewis, Archibald MacLeish, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. Fitzgerald thought highly enough of Curtis’s writing to compare his boys’ adventure novel, The Blushing Camel, favorably to Hemingway and Twain, and to place The Tired Captains in the company of Joseph Conrad. Curtis was also related to Hart Crane and to author-illustrator Rockwell Kent.

This is not an inscription standing alone: the relationship is corroborated by the Kent Curtis Papers at the University of Virginia, which hold several of Fitzgerald’s letters to Curtis. That documentary backing — an association verifiable in a research library’s own archive, rather than reconstructed after the fact — is what distinguishes this copy from most inscribed Fitzgerald material on the market today.

Offered together with The Tired Captains (Appleton, 1928), Curtis’s own first edition, first printing, in first-state dust jacket, inscribed by Curtis to Kilmer Church — a natural companion piece given the two authors’ friendship.

Condition

Tender Is the Night: very good plus to near fine. Text block bright and clean with light edge toning. Cloth covers bright, with light dusting and spotting; spine lightly sunned, gilt titling still bold. Two early California booksellers’ marks (a stamp and a bookplate) on the front pastedown.

Dust jacket: very good plus, possibly better. Light fading to the spine, with several short closed tears at the jacket edges professionally conserved on the interior, and internal hinges lightly reinforced. Jacket is complete, with no restoration to the exterior. We note for full transparency that Prof. Bruccoli’s F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Marketplace (University of South Carolina Press, 2009) does not record a jacket with this particular copy — a common gap in period bibliographic notes rather than an indication against originality. Given the jacket’s exact match to the book’s wear pattern, paper stock, and aging, we’re confident it belongs with this copy, and we disclose the bibliographic silence so buyers can weigh it accordingly.

The Tired Captains: very good plus to near fine, with matching dust jacket in very good plus condition, light sunning to the spine and light chipping at the head.

COLORADO ARTIFACTUAL

 

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