The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter First Edition Facsimile In Illustrated Slip Cover

Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is the author’s first in her string of works that lift the voices of the outsiders. The debut novel tells the story of a deaf-mute man named John Singer, who lives in an unnamed mill town in Georgia in the late 1930s. Left alone after his close friend and roommate is sent away, Singer moves into a boarding house and soon becomes the confidant of four of the town’s mistfits. His new acquaintances include Mick Kelly, a spirited young girl from a poor family; Jake Blount, an alcoholic social reformer; Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland, an idealistic black physician; and Biff Brannon, the childless owner of the local café that brought the group together. These five voices share a common cry of isolation, the novel’s principal theme. Thus, some understand the characters experiencing this shared isolation to be grotesque, a Southern Gothic literary term for elements — often exaggerated — in dissension of social and cultural formations. Bestseller lists in 1940, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was a literary sensation. Modern Library ranked the novel seventeenth on its list of the “100Houghton Mifflin Company first published Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in 1940. Bound in cream cloth with dark red lettering, the 356-page first edition states “1940” on both the title page and the copyright page. *Vintage Pre-owned as is condition. Please see all photos as they are a part of the description.