"Outside of a dog, man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx
Raymond Chandler | First Editions
1888 - 1959
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was a British-American novelist and screenwriter. At the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive, during the Great Depression. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures. In 1958, Chandler was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is considered to be a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, along with other Black Mask writers. Three of Chandler's works have long been considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key [...] to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery".
See below our stock of Raymond Chandler First Editions, fine bindings, and signed copies.
Results 1 - 4 (of 4)
Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler's Early Prose and Poetry, 1908-1912.
Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1973. [Posthumous anthology] LIMITED FIRST EDITION. Octavo (22 x 15cm), pp.xviii; 110. With a frontispiece of the author. Number 167 of 499 copies. Publisher's red quarter faux leather with gilt titles to spine and mottled cream paper over boards. Matching cream endpapers; all..... More
Killer In The Rain. Being: Killer in the Rain; The Man who liked Dogs; The Curtain; Try the Girl; Mandarin's Jade; Bay City Blues; The Lady in the Lake; No Crime in the Mountains. With an Introduction by Philip Durham.
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1964. [Crime stories] FIRST EDITION (stated). Octavo (22 x 15cm), pp.394. Publisher's blue cloth in pictorial dust-wrapper designed by Rob Howard, priced at $5.50. Contents and page edges clean, jacket with a little edgewear and a crease to the spine panel, neat tape reinforcement to..... More
Farewell, My Lovely.
New York, NY: Alfred Knopf, 1940. [Crime novel] FIRST EDITION. Small Octavo (19 x 13cm), pp.[viii]; 275; [1], blank; [1], 'Note'. Publisher's russet cloth blocked in blue, dark blue top edge. A clean copy of the book with no inscriptions, very faint scuff to pastedown, tiny bookplate to rear pastedown..... More
Playback.
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958. [Crime fiction] FIRST UK EDITION. Octavo (19 x 13cm), pp. 208. Publisher's red cloth in dust jacket priced at 12/6. Some toning and faint ink mark to flyleaf, stain at edge of rear flyleaf, jacket with some chips and tears. Very good indeed. The true first..... More
Results 1 - 4 (of 4)