Description

ONE OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARILY RARE INSCRIBED WORKS IN AMERICAN FICTION: “THE GREATEST INNOVATOR IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN FICTION”: THE SOUND AND THE FURY, SCARCE FIRST EDITION IN FIRST-ISSUE DUST JACKET, INSCRIBED BY FAULKNER, ONE OF A VERY FEW KNOWN INSCRIBED COPIES

FAULKNER, William. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, (1929). Octavo, original half white cloth, patterned endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box and chemise.

First edition of Faulkner’s masterpiece, in rare first-state dust jacket, the copy previously belonging to Hollywood director Stephen Roberts, inscribed by on the title page: “William Faulkner, Los Angeles, Cal., 23 April 1936.” Inscribed copies of The Sound and the Fury are most rare.

Faulkner’s intricate masterpiece began as a short story “about a girl and her brothers,” which he had hoped would fill about ten pages, gradually growing into “this radically different work, this immense leap in technique that would contribute to one critic’s calling him ‘the greatest innovator in the history of American fiction” (Blotner, 212). “The book suggests Joyce in its technique and the Russians-perhaps Dostoyevsky-in its theme. Fundamentally it owes little to any individual or to any school: it stands alone as a unique and startling conception” (from front flap). In first-state dust jacket, with Humanity Uprooted priced at $3.00 on the rear panel. Petersen A6.2a. Brucolli & Clarke I:121. Stephen Roberts directed the 1933 film The Story of Temple Drake, an adaptation of Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary. Roberts’ grandson noted that his grandfather recorded the gift of this inscribed volume from Faulkner in his diary, stating that Faulkner inscribed it and a copy of Sanctuary in Los Angeles. Roberts died of a heart attack three months after this copy was inscribed.

Interior fine; light offsetting to spine and light wear to extremities. Only slight edge wear to lightly rubbed, unrestored dust jacket. A beautiful inscribed copy. Inscribed copies of The Sound and the Fury are of the utmost scarcity. A bare handful of examples are known, only one of which is known inscribed in the year of publication. Even the Petersen collection—the famed collection of Carl Petersen, who assembled the most extensive collection of Faulkner works—only had a copy inscribed in the same manner as this one, in Los Angeles in 1936.