NY, Viking, (1978). Matthiessen's National Book Award-winning volume, recounting a trip to the Himalayas with naturalist George Schaller in the hopes both of encountering a snow leopard in the wild and of coming to terms with his wife's recent death from cancer. This copy has an autograph note signed by Matthiessen and an autograph note signed by William Styron laid in, each to Pat Dickey (sister-in-law of James Dickey), and the book is signed by Matthiessen, for Dickey, on a bookplate. In the autograph note signed from Matthiessen to Dickey (1978), Matthiessen thanks Dickey for her kind letter and states he's not sure what she means by a signed bookplate -- "will the enclosed do? (I took it from my son's desk)." The bookplate referenced (now signed and affixed to the title page) pictures a galaxy in space. Matthiessen's mailing envelope is included. In the 1980 autograph note signed from Styron to Dickey, Styron says he would be delighted to help her with her paper on Matthiessen and offers his telephone number in lieu of a lengthy correspondence. Apparently Styron also presented Dickey with a copy of D. Nichols' Matthiessen bibliography, for which Styron wrote the introduction, as Dickey responds with a full-page letter (included here) from Dickey to Styron, thanking him and confessing to being "committed to finding everything [Matthiessen] has written and reading it," and further confessing to loving Matthiessen, though they have never met or spoken: "I am well-traveled having read him, though I have been nowhere. His courage, capacity for hardship to consume the biosphere and give it back to the world is beyond my skill as a writer to laud." The book is foxed on the edges of the text block; a near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket, creased on the front flap. An interesting matrix of literary figures, in a book that effectively conveys the wide range of Peter Matthiessen's impact as a writer. [#032308] SOLD