BECKETT, Samuel. Dream of Fair to Middling Women.

BECKETT, Samuel. Dream of Fair to Middling Women.The chest into which I threw my wild thoughts. BECKETT, Samuel. Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Dublin: The Black Cat Press. 1992. 8vo. Original blue watered silk, lettered black to the spine, publisher's device in blind to front board in blind, black marbled endpapers, in green silk slipcase, with blue ribbon pull, binder's label to lower edge of front pastedown; pp. vii (limitation page tipped in between p. i and iii), [3], 241, [3]; spine a little

The chest into which I threw my wild thoughts.

BECKETT, Samuel. Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Dublin: The Black Cat Press. 1992.

8vo. Original blue watered silk, lettered black to the spine, publisher's device in blind to front board in blind, black marbled endpapers, in green silk slipcase, with blue ribbon pull, binder's label to lower edge of front pastedown; pp. vii (limitation page tipped in between p. i and iii), [3], 241, [3]; spine a little faded, light rubbing to one corner of slipcase; an excellent, near fine copy; inscribed and dated by the editor at the end of his Foreword.

First edition; Copy D of 20 lettered copies bound for the publisher (130 numbered copies were also produced); this copy additionally inscribed by the editor (on the publication date) to Ted O’Brien of The Black Cat Press who with his wife Ursula designed the dustwrapper for the trade edition.

Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Beckett's first novel, was written in Paris in 1932 while the twenty-six-year-old author was living at the Trianon Hotel on the Rue de Vaugirard in Paris. The manuscript, rejected by every publisher it was sent to, would become the basis of the stories collected in More Pricks than Kicks (1934), both works sharing the central (autobiographical) character of Belacqua Shua. The novel remained unpublished and Beckett consistently forbade publication of the novel until, near the end of his life, he relented, in conversation with Eoin O'Brien, and agreed that it could be published, but not "until he was gone for some little time". The book was to be published by John Calder in London, but following a dispute, O'Brien published the book in Dublin before the UK edition emerged. The novel has recently been reissued by Faber and Faber, for which O'Brien's Dublin text (and preface) has been reproduced (Calder’s edition contained a number of errors). Beckett described the novel as "the chest into which I threw my wild thoughts". It is a work of tremendous energy and Joycean exuberance, and key to many of the author's later works.

SKU: 2122683