Bound for Glory.: Illustrated with Sketches by the Author.

New York: E. P. Dutton,, 1943. The folk musician who inspired Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and John Steinbeck First edition, first printing, of the author's partially fictionalized autobiography. Guthrie (1912-1967) was one of the most significant figures in American folk music. Bob Dylan read Bound for Glory and quickly envisioned himself on the same path as the almost mythical "Dust Bowl Troubadour". At his New York stage debut, at Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village, Dylan told the crowd "I been travellin' around the country, followin' in Woody Guthrie's footsteps" (quoted in Smith). Guthrie's politically motivated and impassioned music (his guitar had a sticker that read: "This machine kills fascists") inspired much of Dylan's early work. He wrote "Song to Woody", which met with his hero's approval, and was one of only two original compositions on Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut album. In his review of Bound for Glory for the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman commented: "some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world" (quoted in Londré, p. 105). Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, pictorial design on upper cover in gilt, top edge yellow, fore edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. With photographic portrait frontispiece and illustrations in the text by Guthrie. Spine ends gently bumped, gilt faded, hinges tender, prelims a little foxed, contents clean; jacket a little chipped with a few short closed tears, rear panel rubbed, flaps slightly foxed, unclipped: a very good copy in like jacket. Felicia Hardison Londré, Words at Play, 2005. Casper Llewellyn Smith, "Bob Dylan Visits Woody Guthrie", The Guardian, 16 June 2011.