Description

INTRUDER IN THE DUST, EXCEPTIONAL PRESENTATION FIRST EDITION,
INSCRIBED BY FAULKNER TO HIS LOVER, ELSE JONSSON

FAULKNER, William. Intruder in the Dust. New York: Random House, (1948). Octavo, original black cloth gilt, original dust jacket.

First edition of Faulkner’s first novel in six years, inscribed on the title page by the author to his long-time correspondent and lover Else Jonsson, “William Faulkner for Else, Stockholm, 11 D[e]c 1950.” An extraordinary presentation copy. Faulkner rarely inscribed his works, and most of those he chose to inscribe were to friends or people he knew well.

This coming-of-age story set against a dramatic backdrop of mob violence in the South “combined ‘whodunit’ murder suspense with strong civil rights pronouncements” (Brodsky, 100) and “remains a fascinating piece of fiction, laced with scenes that shimmer with the peculiar intensity that Faulkner could generate” (Parini, 304). This copy inscribed to Faulkner’s lover Else Jonsson. On December 10, 1950, Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize in Stockholm; while there he “met the attractive and intelligent widow of Thorsten Jonsson, Else. Fluent in English and a knowledgeable one-time resident of New York’s Greenwich Village, she and Faulkner struck it off, and he was put at ease in surroundings that otherwise might have driven him to flee. They forged a friendship on the spot: the woman recently widowed, her late husband a man who had admired Faulkner, and the writer himself, personally miserable in his domestic life and now feeling alone and isolated” (Karl, 814). The two become romantically involved, corresponding at length and meeting several times, in Stockholm and elsewhere, over the next decade. Petersen A26.2. Brodsky 259. Bruccoli & Clark I:123. Blockson 5548. Book very fine and fresh. Small smudge to rear panel of bright, lovely dust jacket, light pencil annotation in an unknown hand to front panel regarding Thorsten Jonsson and the book’s original publication date. Because Faulkner rarely signed his books apart from limited editions, copies such as this are most desirable. A remarkable presentation copy.