REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE Hardcover - 1941

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. First Edition. Hardcover. Covers soiled and worn, lacking the dustwrapper. Good in a Fine custom morocco-backed clamshell box. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author for George [Davis] "Who is my Best and Campiest Friend-- /And who, also, is the first/person to really take to this book-/You have helped me and/encouraged me in all ways/that were in your power-/And you know that I love you./Carson." Davis, a magazine editor who later married Lotte Lenya, made his house in Brooklyn into something of an artists colony serving as a home at various times for McCullers, W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Paul Bowles, Gypsy Rose Lee, and others. Davis discovered the manuscript for REFLECTIONS, which according to Virginia Spencer Carr in THE LONELY HUNTER: A BIOGRAPHY OF CARSON MCCULLERS, lay dormant in a dresser drawer for almost a year (page 99), and urged McCullers to let his magazine, Harper's Bazaar, publish it. The author's inscription clearly shows her gratitude to Davis for his instrumental role in getting this, the twenty-four year old's second book, published. Made into a film in 1967 starring Marlon Brando. A magnificent association copy.