MY WORLD - AND WELCOME TO IT

NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1942. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. First edition, second printing of one of Thurber's more popular titles, decades later the basis for the 1969-1970, NBC television comedy series of the same title that won a 1970 Emmy Award as the year's best comedy series. Inscribed by Thurber in black fountain pen on the ffe to married couple friends in Cornwall, CT where Thurber and his wife Helen had a country house for decades. " Luck, Long Life and Best Wishes to Dodie and Merrill. Jim. James Thurber" Laid-in is "With the Compliments of the Author" card and newspaper article by Thurber torn from the front page of the arts section of The New York Times entitled "Thurber Unmasked, Confess His Plot", in which he takes on criticism of his play "The Male Animal" (co-written with Elliott Nugent, to whom he dedicated "My World.") put on by the Community Players of Laguna Beach. The drama critic for the local newspaper had criticized Thurber for holding "sincere Americanism up to ridicule" . Thurber recalls, with typical Thurber acerbity, how Herbert Ross, his editor at The New Yorker, had once facetiously querried" IS Marxim the same as Communism?" Concludes Thurber, "You see, (Ross) wanted to find out whether he had too join two parties or only one. I think the agents have come for me." Red cloth covers and internals very nice. Dusty top edge. Slight stain from red cloth to verso rear panel dustjacket. Yellow dustjacket modestly soiled, spine dulled, chipped lightly at corners and spine ends. Still, presentable. THE NEW YORKER HUMOR ILLUSTRATED.