THE JUNGLE

New York: Jungle Publishing Company, (1906). First Edition. Hardcover. Fine with an outstanding presentation. Bound in full black morocco leather by Root & Son with five raised bands, gilt lettering and dentelles, top edge gilt. First state with the "Sustainer's Edition" label mounted on a front blank. Sinclair's powerful exposure of the Chicago meat-packing industry, still a staple on the menus of many high school reading lists. His account of the social and human abuses of the yards, where packers used "everything about the hog except the squeal," led to major reforms in the industry and, along with UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, is one of the few American novels to have a lasting impact on the way we live our lives. Indeed, when this book was published Jack London said, "What Uncle Tom's Cabin did for black slaves, The Jungle has a large chance to do for the white slaves of today." President Theodore Roosevelt was so shocked by what he read that he made sure a clean meat act, the Pure Food and Drug Bill, was signed into law, popularizing at the time the rather obscure term "muckraker." Later in life, Sinclair said of his masterpiece: "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach." This copy INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on a front blank to Thomas W. Lawson and with a quote in the author's hand from his earlier book JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING: "'Oh thou black jungle of a world!/There savage beasts through forest midnight roam,/Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy.'" Lawson was a wealthy stock speculator and author of both fiction and nonfiction books concerning the stock market. Although he once paid a florist thirty thousand dollars for a single carnation for his wife, his fortunes declined after writing an expose of the market and he died a relatively poor man.