A Shorter Finnegan's Wake
New York: Viking Press, 1967. Octavo, original maroon cloth boards, original unclipped dust jacket with chipping to corners and loss to lower half of spine. Item #100107
First American edition of this abridged critical version of Joyce's sprawling final novel: "Well, you know or don't you kennet or haven't I told you every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it." Edited by Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange. This copy bears the ownership stamps of two notable American writers: novelist Jean Stafford, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and legendary New Yorker journalist Joseph Mitchell. The book is additionally signed by Mitchell in ink. Laid in are Mitchell's notes on Finnegan's Wake, all excerpts from the book with corresponding page numbers, pencilled on a letterhead envelope from Mitchell's family's tobacco warehouse in Fairmont, North Carolina. A terrific association copy.
Price: $1,000.00