Studs Lonigan - A Trilogy Containing: Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, Judgment Day (Modern Library Giant G41)

New York: The Modern Library, 1938. First Thus. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 0x0x0. First thus. Toledano G041.1, binding/jacket style G4/Gb, 262 titles on jacket verso, $1.25 jacket price. Near fine in good jacket. Loss from jacket corners, jacket toned (especially spine),. 1938 Hard Cover. xii, 465 pp. With a new introduction by the author. Studs Lonigan is a novel trilogy by American author James T. Farrell: Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the Studs Lonigan trilogy 29th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The trilogy was adapted into a minor 1960 film and a 1979 television miniseries, both of which were simply titled Studs Lonigan. Farrell wrote these three novels at a time of national despair. During the Great Depression, many of America's most gifted writers and artists aspired to create a single, powerful work of art that would fully expose the evils of capitalism and lead to a political and economic overhaul of the American system. Farrell chose to use his own personal knowledge of Irish-American life on the South Side of Chicago to create a portrait of an average American slowly destroyed by the "spiritual poverty" of his environment. Both Chicago and the Catholic Church of that era are described at length and faulted. Farrell describes Studs sympathetically as Studs slowly deteriorates, changing from a tough but fundamentally good-hearted, adventurous teenage boy to an embittered, physically shattered alcoholic.