First edition is NOT stated. It should have matching dates of 1980 on the title page and the copyright page. The Copyright page should have no references to a second, third, or other printings. First issue of the dust jacket has Walker Percy's blurb on the rear with no other blurbs.
John Kennedy Toole wrote the book in the 1960ís. He committed suicide in 1969 without seeing the book published. His mother went to many publishers in an attempt to have the book published. She finally got Percy Walker to read the manuscript, and Walker had the Louisiana State University press to publish it in 1980. Only 2,500 copies of the first printing were produced.
A Confederacy of Dunces book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
To find the market value for this book, click on the pre-filled eBay, AbeBooks, or Biblio links to the right and look for comparable listings that have all of these first edition points.
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 | Picture of the 1980 first edition dust jacket for A Confederacy of Dunces. |  | |  | |  | First issue of the dust jacket has Walker Percy's blurb about the uniqueness of the book on the rear panel. Later issue jackets have a Chicago Sun-Times blurb. |  | |  | |  | |  | This is a memo from the publisher, Louisiana State University Press, that came with many first printings. It gives background on how this small university text book publisher stumbled across an american classic. The section shown here talks about their early success with the book - "At this point, mid-April 1980, the situation stands like this: our initial printing of 2,500 copies, which is what we have done of our earlier novels, has had to be supplemented by a second printing of 5,000, six weeks before publication. Kirkus and Publishers Weekly have given the book rave reviews, brandishing terms like 'genius,' 'classic,' 'once-in-a-blue-moon first novel.'"... "What will come of all this we obviously don't know at this point, but even if nothing else happens the book will be a very considerable success, and we are extremely pleased to have been partly responsible for its publication."
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