“IT WAS AN EASY, QUICK, ADVENTUROUS AGE, GOOD TO BE YOUNG IN”

COWLEY, Malcolm. Exile's Return, A Literary Odyssey of the 1920's. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1981. Octavo, original half brown cloth and printed paper boards, original glassine, original slipcase. $1100.

First signed limited edition, number 690 of 2000 copies, signed by Cowley and photographer Berenice Abbott, with 12 full-page photogravures by Abbott, Man Ray, André Kertész, Alvin Coburn and Walker Evans.

Literary critic, poet, editor and historian, Malcolm Cowley "will best be remembered for his autobiographical histories of the 1920s 'lost generation," exemplified by Exile's Return and its chronicle of American expatriates in France such as Hemingway, Pound, Stein and Fitzgerald (ANB). Here is a literary generation's "rite of passage… seen through the kindly and analytic eyes of a man who doesn't sit in judgment but has the finest qualities a critic can possess" (Leon Edel, Preface). With prologue and epilogue added by the author in the 1951 revised edition, absent from the original 1934 edition, and introduction by Leon Edel. LEC 523. Original publisher's prospectus laid in.

A fine copy.