Lilith (First Edition, Robert Rossen's annotated copy)

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961. First Edition. First Edition. Robert Rossen's annotated copy of the novel, with his name in manuscript ink on a label affixed on the front board. Rossen would go on to adapt to the novel to the screen and direct in 1964. The film, a psychological drama that was very much an antecedent for the New Hollywood era, starred an array of actors that would go on to great heights: Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, and Kim Hunter.

Rossen's paper clips, all along the top page edges, are still in place, and the book's profuse annotations are mainly in the form of text that is bracketed in manuscript pencil at the margins, indicating Rossen's decision process for pulling the content he would need to write the screenplay.

Rossen's career began as a playwright in New York, and like Odets, Rossen had a tremendous passion for literature, the theatre, and radical politics. His intuitive understanding of the working class informed his first three screenplays after moving to Hollywood, all for director Raoul Walsh: "The Roaring Twenties" (1939), "They Drive By Night" (1940), and "High Sierra" (1941).

During this period he also wrote the screenplays for a number of seminal films noir, including "Out of the Fog" (1941), "Blues in the Night" (1941), "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1941), and many others.

Rossen's work in what became known as classic film noir culminated in three of his most powerful endeavors, which he would also direct: "Johnny O'Clock" (1947), "Desert Fury" (1947), and "Body and Soul" (1947). He ended the 1940s with "All the King's Men" (1949), a powerful adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

In 1961, Rossen would adapt and direct the film that was the pinnacle of his career, "The Hustler" (1961), a brave and unsettling study of a complex man whose psychological makeup cannot accommodate the burdens of his own talents as a professional pool player.

Good to Very Good lacking the dust jacket. Well read, with many leaves dog-eared, hinges loose and split, backstrip worn.