This is a stated first edition of the author's Civil War romance. It was his first novel since writing "Anthony Adverse", another historical romance that is considered the model of contemporary historical novels. This copy has blue boards with a facsimile of the author's signature on the front cover and gold lettering on the spine. It includes a dust jacket which has been encased in mylar. There are some scuffs to the bottom of the covers and the bottom corners are bumped. The dust jacket has some creasing and chipping to the bottom of the front cover and spine, with a piece missing from the top. The first free endpaper has some writing that has been partially erased; otherwise the text appears clean and unmarked.