Graham, Benjamin | The Intelligent Investor, presentation copy

Graham, Benjamin

The Intelligent Investor. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949

8vo (210 x 136 mm). Early printing with code F-Y on copyright page indicating June 1949, the earliest being April 1949; leaves lightly toned, a few stray marginal stains. Original blue cloth, spine gilt-lettered; lacking dust jacket, extremities rubbed, particularly head and foot of spine, corners bumped, fore-edge spotted lightly.

First edition, inscribed by the author to front free endpaper: "To Judge Hutcheson, with respect, Benj Graham, December 1949."

The present copy of Graham's foundational text on value investing was inscribed in the year of publication to Judge Charles Sterling Hutcheson, who served as a United States district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia from 1944 to 1969. Hutcheson decided several key Civil Rights cases, including one that declared the Stanley Plan—statutes which aimed to preserve segregation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education—unconstitutional.

The Intelligent Investor revolutionized stock market strategy upon its publication in 1949, and it continues to influence and inspire investing behavior to this day. Warren Buffett, for example, followed Graham's model after reading the present work at age 19; in his preface to the revised edition, Buffet deemed the work "by far the best book on investing ever written."

Presentation copies of Graham's works are rare. Rare Book Hub records only two presentation copies of Graham's other influential work, Security Analysis. Just one other signed copy of The Intelligent Investor has appeared at auction, and that copy—which sold at Sotheby's in 2022—bore only a dated signature.

PROVENANCE

Judge Charles Sterling Hutcheson (presentation inscription to front free endpaper; blindstamp to first two leaves)