Octavo (22cm); Black cloth over black paper-covered boards; dark gray topstain; titles in white and green on spine; xii,274pp. Inscribed on verso of front free endpaper: "For Sandy& Richard and Richard&Sandy / from Susan / with much love," undated but contemporary with publication. With occasional underlining and marginalia in the hand of Richard Howard, including a few notes to the ffe and rear jacket flap.  With some staining to the fore-edge in the final approximately 70 pp, barely coming round the margins in most cases and otherwise a tight and generally fine copy throughout. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped (priced $4.50 on front flap); toned, with small losses to upper spine edge and a taped repair to right front. 

A very important association copy of Sontag's uncommon first book, inscribed at the beginning of her fiction-writing career to the American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator who Sontag has called "a very central figure in our culture, maintaining and giving eloquent voice and illustration to standards that are in peril today. Richard and I go back a long way. He’s my first serious literary friend. He’s not the first writer I ever met, but he was my first profound chum, ally, buddy, accomplice, brother in literature. We met soon after I came to New York in the beginning of the sixties, and we immediately started cooking up projects—things we wanted to sponsor and impose."  The American novelist Sanford ("Sandy") Friedman was the partner of Richard Howard during this period, during which time Howard dedicated his poem "1915: A Pre-Raphaelite Ending, London" to him.