Ferber (Edna) Giant

London, Gollancz, 1957.

First UK edition, ninth impression (film tie-in issue). 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

Ferber’s 1952 doorstop about Texas: cattle empires, oil money, and the Benedict marriage strained across both. Texans received the work about as warmly as you’d expect a state to receive a book pointing out its vulgarity at length. Its afterlife belongs to George Stevens’ 1956 film, which won him the Best Director Oscar and gave James Dean his third and final role: he died in September 1955, before release, making Jett Rink a posthumous performance and the film a permanent object of sometimes morbid fascination. A tie-in impression, so the collecting interest here is really the jacket, with Taylor, Hudson and Dean on the upper cover.