A Good School (1978) Signed First Edition Reference

A Good School is the most modest and intimate of Richard Yates’s novels — a slim, autobiographical account of life at a small, financially struggling prep school in Connecticut during World War II. Published by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence in 1978, it draws on Yates’s own experience at the Avon Old Farms School, where he was a scholarship student in the early 1940s. At barely 180 pages, it is closer to a novella than a novel, and its gentle, almost affectionate tone distinguishes it from the corrosive realism of Yates’s other fiction.

The Novel

The school — called Dorset Academy in the novel — is a failing institution kept alive by its founder’s declining fortune and the wartime enrollment of boys who would otherwise have been drafted. Yates’s protagonist, William Grove, is a lonely, awkward teenager navigating the social hierarchies of prep school life while aware that the war waiting outside the gates will soon claim him and his classmates.

The novel’s most striking quality is its warmth. Where Yates’s other books are relentlessly clear-eyed about human self-deception, A Good School allows its characters moments of genuine connection and kindness. The school may be failing, the boys may be heading toward combat, but the book captures the particular sweetness of adolescent friendship with a tenderness unusual in Yates’s work.

The autobiographical frame — the novel ends with a brief section in which Yates reflects directly on the school and its meaning in his life — adds a layer of personal reckoning that enriches the fiction.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Delacorte Press / Seymour Lawrence, New York Publication date: 1978 Pages: Approximately 180 pages Copyright page: First printing per Delacorte convention

Signed Copy Market

• Signed first edition: Very scarce
• Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
• Unsigned first edition, very good: $75–$200

A Good School is one of the more affordable Yates titles in unsigned form, reflecting its shorter length and less prominent position in the Yates canon. Signed copies, however, carry the scarcity premium common to all signed Yates.

Collecting Notes

This is a title that rewards patient searching. Its slim profile means it was easily overlooked in used bookstores and estate sales during the decades of Yates’s obscurity, and copies do still surface in unexpected places. The book’s modest length and quiet subject matter make it less of a display piece than Revolutionary Road or The Easter Parade, but it is essential for a complete Yates collection and genuinely rewarding to read.