PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY VIRGINIA WOOLF TO HENRY JAMES' SECRETARY: UNIFORM EDITION OF JACOB'S ROOM, 1929

WOOLF, Virginia. Jacob's Room. London: Published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1929. Small octavo, original emerald green cloth, supplied dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $8800.

"Uniform edition" of the first full-length novel published by the Hogarth Press, and an important success for Woolf, presentation copy inscribed by her on the front free endpaper: "Theodora Bosanquet, from Virginia Woolf, 1935."

"Jacob's Room marks the beginning of her maturity and her fame" (Bell, Virginia Woolf, 319). This book also marks the moment when the Woolfs decided to run their Hogarth Press as a genuine business concern: "With the publication of Jacob's Room the decision was taken to establish the Hogarth Press as a business concern and in future to publish all Mrs. Woolf's works" (Kirkpatrick, 17). Self-publishing Jacob's Room gave Virginia Woolf "an artistic freedom and a degree of self-determination she prized above all else. The completion and publication of the novel led Virginia… to a period of great fertility" (Willis, 61).

Recipient Theodora Bosanquet was Henry James' secretary from 1907 until his death in 1916. Later, Bosanquet was also the longtime literary editor of Time and Tide. She wrote the monograph "Henry James at Work," which the Hogarth Press published in 1924. In appreciation, Virginia Woolf wrote, "Dear Miss Bonanquet, I think your essay is a great success, and I'm glad you did not keep it to tinker at, for I think you have suggested everything, and further work might well have spoilt it. As it is, you have got an immense deal into it, and made it come together perfectly as a whole. I'm sure it ought to have a success with anyone who cared for Henry James and his work, and I think we are very lucky to get it." First published in 1922; Hogarth Press brought out this "uniform edition" along with several other of Woolf's works. Dust jacket supplied from another copy of the same edition. Kirkpatrick A6c. Woolmer 26.

Spine of cloth and dust jacket sunned. A near-fine presentation copy.