“WILLIAM FAULKNER AT HIS BEST”: EXCEPTIONALLY SCARCE SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION OF GO DOWN, MOSES, ONE OF ONLY 100 COPIES, BINDER'S FILE COPY

FAULKNER, William. Go Down, Moses and Other Stories. New York: Random House, (1942). Octavo, original three-quarter rose cloth, top edge gilt. $22,500.

Signed limited first edition, one of only 100 copies signed by the author, the binder's file copy. The scarcest of all Faulkner signed limited editions, with the first book appearance of “The Bear.”

Go Down, Moses "was a landmark volume for Faulkner… Here we have the Southern dilemma, and Faulkner has transformed it into the American" (Karl, 665-67). "So committed was Faulkner to the expansive possibilities of the short story form that in Go Down, Moses he created what he always insisted was a novel composed entirely of interrelated stories previously published separately" (Gelfant, 252). One of the most acclaimed stories, "The Bear," had appeared, in abbreviated form, in the Saturday Evening Post the same year (Brodsky 229); the coming-of-age tale remains one of Faulkner's most anthologized. A contemporary review in the Boston Globe said of all the stories that they "represent William Faulkner at his best. Which is equivalent to saying the best we have." This is an out-of-series copy, the binder's file copy, with a stamp on the front free endpaper reading "The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., Job No [filled in by hand] 51740." Massey 448. Petersen A23.2a.

Fine condition.