Guys and Dolls by Damon RUNYON
RUNYON, Damon. Guys and Dolls. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931.
First edition in later Grosset & Dunlap dust jacket (c. 1932 printed using the same plates as the original Frederick A. Stokes dust jacket illustrated by Arthur Hawkins).
Guys and Dolls is a collection of wonderfully evocative stories set in the Jazz Age Manhattan, specifically around a few louche streets and bars around Broadway and Times Square, featuring a world of gamblers, gangsters, hustlers and hoods, bearing colourful monikers such as Regret, Dave the Dude, Good Time Charley, Harry the Horse, Izzy Cheesecake, The Brain, Sky Masterson, and their ‘dolls’ Miss Lovely Lou, Big Marge, Dark Dolores, and Madame La Gimp.
Guys and Dolls was made into a stage musical first performed on Broadway in 1950, with music by Frank Loesser, and adapted for the cinema in 1955, in a film directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons.
Damon Runyon (1880-1946) is known as the poet of the midnight world of New York’s Broadway, vividly depicting its denizens living on the edge, often through long nights of drinking and gambling, betting on crapshoots, pool tables or horses.
8vo, original red cloth, black lettering, professional restoration to spine ends. Dust jacket slightly rubbed/worn, with a couple of small light abrasions to front panel. A very attractive copy.