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. 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. Often when copies do turn up, their condition is poor from having been read, re-read and, often, passed around. This copy has four lines (one crossed out) penned on page 14, sunning to the spine, partial loss to the first two letters of the spine title, and some very mild bending and creasing. A very good copy in wrappers. [#033217] SOLD