The World of Li'l Abner [*SIGNED*]

New York: Farrar, Straus and Young. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1953. First Edition. Hardcover. [minor wear at ends of spine, pages age-toned but not severely, vintage bookplate on front pastedown; the jacket is modestly edgeworn, slightly faded at the spine, a little scuffed on the front panel, with a tiny closed tear and some associated creasing at the bottom of the rear panelDETAILS NEEDED; generic bookplate of Susanna Lloyd on front pastedown (cartoon strip reproductions) INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep: "To HOPPY, SUSIE and / PEGGY LLOYD / from / GRATEFUL and / DELIGHTED AL / CAPP." The second hardcover book about the denizens of Dogpatch, USA (the first had been "The Life and Times of the Shmoo," published in 1948, unless you count a handful of Big/Better Little Books that had been issued in the late 1930s/early 1940s). Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic strip, introduced in 1934, had by the late 1940s become a genuine cultural phenomenon -- whIch accounts for the fact that not one but two world-famous luminaries were enlisted to write the Introduction and Foreword, respectively, for this little volume: John Steinbeck and Charles Chaplin. (Steinbeck: "I get interviewed by lean and hungry Yurrpeens now and then and they always want me to say who is the best writer in America today and I can't think of any name but Capp. I think Capp may very possibly be the best writer in the world today." Chaplin: "For me personally, Al Capp, with his delightful characters, opens new vistas of broad buffoonery with inspirational satire.) This book appeared in the wake of possibly the biggest event of all time in the Li'l Abner cosmos: the long-teased wedding of Li'l Abner and his perpetually-smitten sweetheart, Daisy Mae, which took place in March 1952, and the original strips for which are included here. This comic-strip wedding caused such a media frenzy that it landed the principals -- the gobsmacked Abner, the finally-fulfilled Daisy Mae, and the presiding preacher Marryin' Sam -- on the cover of the March 31, 1952 issue of Life magazine, which also contained an article by Capp, "Why I Let Li'l Abner Marry," (The jacket illustration on the book is a slight variation of the Life cover, with Marryin' Sam performing the ceremony.) The inscribees of this copy were the children and wife of the late actor Norman Lloyd, from whose estate this book was acquired; although Capp's printed-in-all-caps "signature" doesn't resemble most examples of his autograph, it is unquestionably authentic. Signed by Author .