A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE

Second printing of the first edition. Inscribed by Eudora Welty. Publisher's original brown cloth with gilt titles to the upper board and spine, in dustwrapper. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping to the extremities, the cloth and gilt bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout. Complete with the rubbed and nicked dustwrapper that is a little toned and marked to the panel edges. The author's first novel.

Inscribed by Eudora Welty (whose quote is printed on the front panel of the dustwrapper) in black ink on the half title "To Patchy / with a warm welcome now / and the next times, / and with gratitude and / the pleasure of our meeting / Eudora / March 31, 1986 / Jackson, Mississippi". The recipient Patchy Wheatley, produced and directed an episode of the multi-award winning arts documentary series 'Omnibus' (S.23, E.10) entitled 'Eudora Welty: One Writer's Beginnings'. The acclaimed documentary aired in America as a edition of the PBS series 'The American Experience'. The [future] Pulitzer Prize winning author Eudora Welty first met Reynolds Price in February 1955. The novelist and short-story writer was coming to Duke University to give a lecture and lead a writing seminar. Price, a Duke senior English major from Warren County, having learned Welty's train would arrive well after midnight and knowing taxis would be unavailable that late, decided to chauffeur her to her hotel in his mother's DeSoto convertible. At the next day's seminar, Welty read Price's short story, 'Michael Egerton' and offered to send it to her agent. There began a friendship that lasted until Welty's death in 2001.