"I WAS NEVER ABLE TO LET ROLAND CREEP AWAY INTO THAT EXILE WHICH IS THE UNHAPPY HOME OF UNFULFILLED CHARACTERS": THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA, SIGNED BY STEPHEN KING AND ILLUSTRATOR MICHAEL WHELAN
KING, Stephen. The Little Sisters of Eluria. Hampton Falls, New Hampshire: Donald M. Grant, (2008). Quarto, original full snakeskin-textured leatherette, original dust jacket, original full snakeskin-textured leatherette clamshell box with foil-stamped design. $2500.
Limited deluxe first edition, number 327 of 1250 copies, of this companion volume to Stephen King's masterful Dark Tower series, with full-page color illustrations by Michael Whelan, signed by King and Whelan.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." With those words—inspired by Robert Browning's Childe Roland and Sergio Leone's film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and typed on an old Underwood in 1970—King struck the initial notes of a saga 34 years in the completion. "Many of my fictions," King reflected, "refer back to Roland's world and Roland's story… My idea was to use the Dark Tower stories as a kind of summation, a way of unifying as many of my previous stories as possible…" These novels, the work of a lifetime, are "different in tone from most of Stephen King's work—and perhaps more demandingly inventive than usual—these have an undeniable mythic charge" (Clute & Nichols, 666). "Each of the novels is a mélange of motifs and ideas borrowed from horror, fantasy, Western and science fiction… King's narrative strategy and plot mechanics for the individual installments of the series show a wide variety of influences, ranging from L. Frank Baum's Oz novels to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales… [King indulges] some of his most fanciful and extravagant horrors" (Fantasy and Horror 6-194). The later addition of The Little Sisters of Eluria (2004) occurs in the same universe, although the novella precedes the rest of the stories in the timeline and was meant to provide "a clearer start and a slightly easier entry into Roland's world… that more effectively foreshadowed coming events." This volume also contains King's revised and expanded version of The Gunslinger, the first book in the epic series. Illustrated with dramatic full-page color plates by Michael Whelan. Issued simultaneously with the first trade edition and with a limited artist's edition of 4000 copies signed only by Whelan. Brooks A18 & B155.
Fine condition.