Giovanni's Room (1956), signed

• Published: The Dial Press, New York, 1956
• Edition: First edition, first printing
• Binding: Quarter black cloth and boards, unclipped dust jacket
• Dimensions: Octavo
• Language: English
• Signature: Signed by Baldwin on the half-title (not inscribed).
• Condition: Fine in a fine dust jacket.

Baldwin's second novel, written in Paris and published in 1956. David, a young American waiting for his fiancée to return from Spain, falls in love with Giovanni, an Italian barman, and abandons him; he tells the story on the night before Giovanni's execution. Knopf, which had published Go Tell It on the Mountain, turned it down, reportedly advising Baldwin to burn the manuscript, and Dial Press took it.

Baldwin made his characters white, saying he could not have taken on both race and sexuality in a single book. The result is a novel about shame, masculinity and the cost of refusing love, and about American innocence abroad. It is now read as one of the essential American novels of the twentieth century and a cornerstone of gay literature.