A very elusive title as the first issue

Barnes, Djuna ~ Nightwood

Faber & Faber,London : 1936

The First UK printing published by Faber & Faber, London in 1936. The BOOK is in Very Good+ condition. Original publisher's purple cloth with the spine lettered in gilt. Top-stain purple but faded, bottom edge untrimmed. Boards sunned at the edges and, patchily at the spine ends. The corners are bumped, more-so to the upper corner of the rear board. Discrete previous owner's inscription in black ink to the front blank end-paper. Both front blank end-papers are present. Some slight loss and creasing to the bottom edge of pp. 75-6 where they have been uncut roughly. A few nicks with easing of the gatherings at pages 128-129, but the binding remains firm. A scattering of spotting to the rear pastedown. The original green and purple typographical WRAPPER is in Good+ condition. The spine and edges are toned, a few age related markings and some losses to the top edges of the front and rear panels especially (see images). Some nibbling into the title 'N', with some splitting at all joints, especially at the rear flap. The wrapper comes together and still presents well in the removable Brodart archival cover. Barnes' celebrated, queer Modernist classic. Scarce, especially in the original wrapper in any condition. Barnes' extraordinary second novel, a performance of high catharsis, gothic style and eccentricity, apparently helped her assimilate her deep grief over her separation from the American sculptor Thelma Wood. While Wood's surname makes up half of the title, she was far from flattered by the portrait of the character Robin Vote, according to Emily Holmes Coleman, the friend who worked doggedly to see Nightwood in print and who eventually coerced T.S. Eliot to take it for Faber publishers: 'There has been nothing written of such intense jealousy before'. Loosely inserted is a 'New Directions Books Spring 1963 Supplement' flyer in which Dylan Thomas reviews the book as 'One of the three great prose books ever written by a woman' and T.S. Eliot who provides the introduction to the 1963 reissue : 'What I would leave the reader prepared to find is the great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterization, and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy'. A very elusive title as the first issue in any condition. The first we have handled.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good+
JACKET: Good+