Alan Paton. First edition, early printing. New York: Charles's Scribner's Sons, 1948. Dust Jacket: Very Good+ An unclipped ($3.00) jacket (has all first edition points). The archival jacket has some chipping on top/bottom of spine. Near Fine hardcover with orange cloth and grey lettering on spine. No writing or marking in the book, 278 pp., some very light foxing on front/back cover.
Both the title page and copyright page have the same date (1948) but there is no "A" along with Scribner seal on copyright page. The dust jacket, however, is a first edition.
The most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, "We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony." "The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time" (The New Republic)
