"HE FELL IN OCTOBER, 1918, ON A DAY THAT WAS SO QUIET AND SO STILL… THAT THE ARMY REPORT CONFINED ITSELF TO THE SINGLE SENTENCE": ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

REMARQUE, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. Boston: Little, Brown, 1929. Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket. $2200.

First American edition, published in the same year as the first German book edition and the first London edition, of Remarque's starkly realistic classic, a landmark novel of the 20th century.

Erich Maria Remarque's controversial "indictment of a 'civilization' that could descend to such warfare with its anomic consequences," titled Im Westen nichts Neues in its initial serialization in the Vossiche Zeitung (1928), first appeared in book form in Germany in January 1929, with the first edition in English printed that same year in London (Books of the Century, 173). The novel "affronted the National Socialists, who read it as slanderous to their ideals of home and fatherland… In 1933 all of Remarque's works were consigned to the infamous bonfires… Jonathon Green in his Encyclopedia of Censorship identifies All Quiet on the Western Front as one of the 'most often' censored books" (Karolides, 6-7). "A book of terrible experiences… it will leave no reader unmoved" (New York Times Book Review). Translated from the German by A.W. Wheen. With "First Printing" on copyright page. Small dealer ticket to rear pastedown, evidence of removal of another dealer ticket.

Book fine, dust jacket very good with modest edge-wear and soiling, one closed tear to rear panel, mild toning to spine.