San Francisco, Four Seasons, 1967. The true first edition of Brautigan's "breakthrough" book, which established his unique writing style and sensibility and for the first time earned him a wide audience. Issued as "Writing 14" in the Four Seasons Foundation publishing series and preceding the Delta edition. Signed by Brautigan and dated September 29, 1967. This copy belonged to Brautigan's longtime friend and fellow poet Joanne Kyger (wife of first Gary Snyder and then Jack Boyce), and her bookplate is on the front flyleaf. Kyger was one of the dedicatees of In Watermelon Sugar, Brautigan's next novel after Trout Fishing. Offsetting to the front flyleaf (over the signature, which remains perfectly legible) and inside the front cover; thus a near fine copy in wrappers. Don Allen of Four Seasons picked up Trout Fishing after Grove Press dumped Brautigan when A Confederate General from Big Sur failed to meet sales expectations when it was published in 1964. With virtually no advertising or promotion, Trout Fishing went through multiple printings, sold 35,000 copies -- an unheard of number for any Four Seasons Foundation publication -- and made Brautigan one of the key writers of his generation. The book has sold two million copies in all its editions. The first edition of Trout Fishing is one of the most elusive of the key books of the 1960s. Reportedly its first printing was, like several other Four Seasons Foundation books, 1000 copies (2000 has also been stated); but copies of Trout Fishing turn up with markedly less frequency than his other Four Seasons Foundation titles, In Watermelon Sugar and The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster: currently, one online site has listings for 13 copies of the Four Seasons edition of Watermelon and 23 copies of The Pill; the only two copies of Trout Fishing listed are third printings. Often when copies do turn up, their condition is poor from having been read and re-read and, often, passed around. We could find records of only four copies appearing at auction, and three of those copies had pages detached. Only one signed copy has ever shown up at auction, and we don't recall another signed copy in any dealer's offerings in at least the last quarter century. This is the nicest copy we have seen, and an association copy of the highest order: by 1967, Kyger's and Brautigan's friendship went back a decade already. She had lived in Japan with Gary Snyder, and Brautigan later made Japan his second home -- The Tokyo-Montana Express being the title of one of his last books. An extraordinary high spot of the literature of the 1960s, one of the rarest signed first editions from that era, and an association copy. [#030694] SOLD