Description

“FOR THE MAN UPSTAIRS”: FIRST EDITION OF DARK CARNIVAL, BRADBURY’S FIRST BOOK, BOLDLY INSCRIBED AND TWICE SIGNED BY HIM

BRADBURY, Ray. Dark Carnival. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1947. Octavo, original full black cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Bradbury’s scarce and important first book, boldly inscribed “For ‘the man upstairs,’ Ray Bradbury” and signed again by him on the title page.

The 27 stories collected in Dark Carnival mark Ray Bradbury’s departure from publishing in pulp magazines. Their “stylistic deftness? stands at the head of a tradition in modern horror fiction” (Barron 4-24). “Evocative, poetic and suffused with youthful wonder, Bradbury’s tales broke with pulp conventions in their style and approach to the fantastic? Collected in his first book Dark Carnival? they mesh to form a small-town landscape in which the magic possibilities of ordinary life and the banality of the fantastic are indistinguishable from one another” (Clute & Grant, 132). Because only 3112 copies were printed, “Dark Carnival was never widely available,” and in 1955 Arkham House published The October Country, which is “substantially a reprint of Dark Carnival” (Horror 100 Best 55). With bright pictorial dust jacket by George Barrows. Currey, 55. Faint sign of plate removal. Book fine; light edge-wear and slight soiling to extremely good dust jacket. Highly desirable, scarce signed.