A medicine for melancholy

New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959. FIRST EDITION. Publisher’s black cloth with silver decorations on front cover, author and title on spine, in a perfect unclipped dust jacket ($1.75 on top of front flap) but with a price sticker on the back. Overall in excellent condition. First edition of a modest collection of Bradbury short stories. A similar group was published simultaneously in the United Kingdom, though it contained a number of different stories. Like much of Bradbury’s writing, the stories here are written in a poetic tone tending to have a comforting effect but still evoking lasting images. They deal with the internal struggles of lonliness, homesickness and love. Sinister mushrooms growing in a dank cellar; a family's first glimpse at Martians; a wonderful white vanilla ice-cream summer suit that changes everyone who wears it; a great artist drawing in the sand on the beach; a clunky contraption made out of household implements to help some kids play a game called Invasion; the most marvelous Christmas display a little boy ever saw. All of these images are encountered in the 21 stories of A medicine for melancholy.

Bradbury (1920-2012) was one of those significant authors who inspired generations of readers. His talent spread to many genres including science fiction, fantasy and mystery, poetry, operas and hundreds of teleplays. Even apart from his groundbreaking works such as Farenheit 451, The Martian chronicles and The illustrated man, Bradbury is considered one of the most celebrated authors of our time.