Updike, John. A SOFT SPRING NIGHT IN SHILLINGTON.

Northridge: Lord John, 1986. The author's hand-corrected galley proofs for the 1986 book. In what is a testament to Updike's concentrated editorial meticulousness, each of the forty-three pages bears multiple additions, emendations, spelling and punctuation corrections, and other rewritings of the text -- some several hundred examples in all. Updike returns to the town in which he grew up after an absence of fifty years, eliciting an extended heartfelt remembrance of the time of his youth. Laid in are two TLS from Updike to the book's publisher, in the first of which he chides his book-collecting publisher -- Herb Yellin: "Hey, cut it out with all those imperial directives. Do this, sign that, send by Federal Express..." By way of contrast, the second letter is conciliatory: "When do you want to do the Shillington piece? I can send the ms. any time." About as close to an Updike full-book manuscript as one will encounter. Near fine. Housed in a custom-made cloth folding box. Hardcover.