21 “She Wanted To Transform The Novel” 23WOOLF, Virginia. The Voyage Out. London, 1915. Octavo, original green cloth, custom clamshell box. $7500 First edition of Woolf’s first novel, one of only 2000 copies printed—the Bradley Martin copy. “Virginia Woolf emerged as a novelist through writing The Voyage Out. It was begun early in 1908 and not published until 1915. The fact that she rewrote the book so many times (she left evidence of five drafts, burnt several more) suggests her uneasiness. She wanted to transform the novel in ways that now seem quite consistent with contemporary experiments in modern art but which were for her, in 1908, solitary ambitions” (Gordon, Virginia Woolf, 98). E.M. Forster praised her debut work as “a strange tragic inspired novel… her passion for truth is here already” (Virginia Woolf, 11). Without rare dust jacket. From the celebrated library of H. Bradley Martin, with his bookplate in the clamshell box. Martin amassed one of the world’s finest book collections, prominently featuring American, English and French literature. Interior clean, just a touch of rubbing to corners and spine ends, cloth fresh. A superb, about-fine copy, with exceptional provenance. “Life And A Lover”: Signed Limited First Edition Of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando 24WOOLF, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York, 1928. Octavo, original gilt-stamped black cloth, custom slipcase. $9600 Signed limited first edition of Woolf’s fantastical and often whimsical novel, one of 861 copies signed on the verso of the half title by Woolf in her trademark purple ink, with eight plates. The character of Virginia Woolf’s young Elizabethan nobleman who does not age through four centuries and appears in male and female manifestations was based on Woolf’s intimate friend Vita SackvilleWest, to whom the book is dedicated. At the time of Orlando’s publication critics praised Woolf, who “once more… has broken with tradition and convention and has set out to explore still another fourth dimension of writing. Not that she has abandoned the ‘stream of consciousness’ method… but with it she has combined what, for lack of a better term, we might describe as an application to writing of the Einstein theory of relativity” (New York Times). Without extremely scarce glassine dust jacket, rarely found. Kirkpatrick A11. A beautiful signed copy in fine condition.
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