NY, Viking, (1965). The author's second novel, which was acclaimed at the time of publication and then fell into swift and undeserved obscurity. Stoner reportedly sold less than 2000 copies in its original edition and went out of print within a year. It was reissued in 2003 and then again in 2006, in the New York Review of Books Classics series. In 2011 it was translated into French, where it enjoyed considerable critical success and in 2012 it was named the Waterstones Book of the Year in England. The New Yorker once called it "the greatest American novel you've never heard of" and in 2014 a writer in the New York Times Magazine said he "had never encountered a work so ruthless in its devotion to human truths and so tender in its execution." A 50th anniversary edition was published in October 2015. This copy is inscribed by the author to another writer and his wife "with much pleasure and satisfaction with a new friendship begun at Bread Loaf, Vermont," and dated in August, 1966. Mild foredge foxing, slight spine lean; a near fine copy in a very good, spine-faded dust jacket with tape shadows from an old jacket protector on the flaps and spine. The first edition is very scarce, especially signed, and particularly as a literary association copy. Williams' next novel, Augustus, published in 1972, won the National Book Award. [#032333] SOLD