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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;2manycats, post: 4477554, member: 13761&quot;]Grosset &amp; Dunlap were mainly reprinters, but they did do the first editions - and hundreds of later printings - of many children&#039;s series, including Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. They typically reprinted popular fiction a year or so after the original publication date, and the copyright page will often - but by no means always - show language similar to your Catcher: &quot;published by arrangement with...&quot; The list price was usually about half the cost of a new book at the time. Paperbacks were not yet the phenomena that they became. </p><p><br /></p><p>Book-of-the-Month, by contrast, often bought copies straight from the publisher or had them printed by the same press that printed for the publisher, roughly simultaneously with the first edition - it was a point of pride and part of the sales pitch to have your book be picked for BOMC, like having a Top Ten record. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve priced the Grosset Catcher from $25 to $80, depending on condition, the one in question being closer to $25. That second eBay price is nuts - some sucker believed the seller&#039;s erroneous statement about it being a first edition. The true first was published by Little, Brown and says &quot;first edition&quot; on the copyright page and has a price on the jacket flap. Early book club editions have Salinger&#039;s photo on the back panel, which was removed at his request in later printings, so even book club copies with the photo fetch decent money - more than the reprint, which came out considerably later.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the book itself, I first read it after college, just because I&#039;d never read it and thought I should, and found Holden to be awful whiny. A bit later I realized that Salinger was portraying a case of PTSD - Holden is effectively shell-shocked by the death of his brother, which Salinger correctly glosses over, because Holden doesn&#039;t understand its real effect on him.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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