Lincoln, Amusingly Inscribed by Gore Vidal to Sue Mengers
[Signed Presentation by Gore Vidal to Sue Mengers and Her Husband, Jean-Claude Tramont] Lincoln: A Novel. First Edition. 1984. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is amusingly inscribed on the half title page, “Sue (Mary Todd) & JC (Abe), Love, Gore.”
This installment in Gore Vidal’s American Chronicles series of historical novels was a critical and commercial success, garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination and selling two hundred fifty thousand copies in hardcover. It was also adapted into a made-for-television film that won Mary Tyler Moore (as Mary Todd) an Emmy. Had it been published a decade earlier, when she was Vidal’s agent, Mengers might have negotiated the deal. However, the cooling of their business relationship did not damage to their personal one. Mengers and Vidal remained lifelong friends, as noted by Vidal’s biographer Fred Kaplan, and as evidenced by the tongue-in-cheek inscription to this copy.
“With [Sue] Mengers and her husband, in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Gore and Howard [Austen] took brief vacations in Venice, Vienna, and Morocco. In Hollywood she hosted birthday and other parties for them, especially for Howard, who found Hollywood glamour and sociability irresistible in contrast to the comparative isolation of much of his Ravello routine.”
--Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography