Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958. First edition. Inscribed by Erskine Caldwell to Jack Warner, CEO of Warner Bros. Studios in the month of publication: "To J.L. Warner, who has lived a lot of better stories than some of the make-believe ones made up by guys like me – Erskine Caldwell. January 1959." Warner Bros. Studios had purchased the rights to the novel before its publication, and this copy was likely inscribed in thanks for the deal. A Near Fine copy in like dust jacket (supplied). Publisher's blue-green cloth titled in teal. Cloth with some sunning and fading. Small nick to cloth of upper board and a smudge to lower board. Minor toning to endpapers, otherwise very clean throughout. Dust jacket with some wear to edges and some fading to spine.

Claudelle Inglish was adapted for the screen in 1961. Gordon Douglas directed, Leonard Freeman wrote the screenplay, and Diane McBain starred in the titular role alongside Arthur Kennedy. The studio had actually shown interest in acquiring the rights to Caldwell's earlier novel Tobacco Road, but backed out of the deal due to the novel's controversial themes and concerns that the film adaptation would be banned. With Claudelle Inglish, Jack Warner took the opportunity to secure the rights in 1958, months before the novel's publication.

Jack Warner (1892 – 1978) was the co-founder and CEO of Warner Bros. Studios. Jack and his brothers Sam, Albert, and Harry, who had already been in the film production business for nearly two decades, founded the studio in Culver City, California in the early 1920s. The early successes of the studio included The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length "talkie," which represented a major technological advancement; and the films of stars like James Cagney, Bette Davis, and Errol Flynn. Over the course of his five-decade career, Jack saw the production of classic Warner Bros. films including The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1943), iconic Westerns like The Searchers (1956), and the Audrey Hepburn hit My Fair Lady (1964). Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. (Item #8080)