signed-firsts

Young Hearts Crying (1984) Signed First Edition Reference

Approx. 2 min read · 4 May 2026

Young Hearts Crying is Richard Yates’s longest novel and his most ambitious attempt to write a panoramic social novel in the mode of Revolutionary Road. Published by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence in 1984, it follows Michael and Lucy Davenport from their postwar courtship through three decades of marriage, divorce, and separate decline. The novel is an explicit attempt to chronicle the disappointments of Yates’s own generation — the GI Bill intellectuals who expected their educations and their ambitions to carry them to artistic and personal fulfillment, and who instead found themselves trapped in the same cycles of self-deception and failure that Yates had been documenting since Revolutionary Road.

The Novel

Michael Davenport is a Harvard-educated war veteran who wants to be a poet but lacks the talent. Lucy has money, which allows Michael to pursue his artistic ambitions while resenting her for making it possible. Their marriage follows a familiar Yates trajectory — mutual disappointment, alcoholism, infidelity, and eventual dissolution — but the novel’s length (over 400 pages) allows Yates to extend the story through the 1960s and 1970s, tracking both characters into separate, parallel failures.

The book was not well received on publication. Critics found it too long, too familiar in its themes, and too relentless in its pessimism. It sold poorly even by Yates’s standards. The retrospective view is more generous — the novel’s scope and ambition are impressive, even if the execution is uneven, and individual scenes (particularly the agonizing dinner parties and the post-divorce encounters) are among the most finely observed in Yates’s work.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Delacorte Press / Seymour Lawrence, New York Publication date: 1984 Copyright page: First printing per Delacorte convention Binding: Standard hardcover format

Signed Copy Market

Signed first edition: Very scarce
Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $150–$400
Unsigned first edition, very good: $50–$150

Young Hearts Crying is among the more affordable Yates titles for unsigned copies, reflecting its lower critical standing relative to Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade. The signed copy market follows the usual Yates pattern — extreme scarcity with prices driven more by the rarity of any signed Yates than by this particular title’s standing.

Collecting Notes

This novel rewards rereading and has benefited from the broader Yates rehabilitation. Its status as his most expansive social novel — the closest he came to writing a big American novel in the Fitzgerald-Cheever tradition — gives it a particular appeal to collectors interested in the postwar American literary mainstream. The book was widely remaindered, so copies with remainder marks or price-clipped jackets are common.