Jaws. London: Deutsch, 1974. First UK Edition. Pp 272. Publisher’s red cloth boards, title lettered in gilt on spine, dust jacket designed by Tom Simmonds.  A nice bright copy.

Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel the book that inspired the movie starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw & Richard Dreyfuss.

First published in the same year by Doubleday & Co., New York.

While often overshadowed by its film adaptation, the novel’s lean, propulsive prose and its focus on class tension (between the working-class shark hunter and the complacent elite) established a template for the modern blockbuster novel, proving that literary techniques could drive page-turning commercial fiction.