“A PRIVATE VISION OF BEAUTY UNDONE BY BETRAYAL AND BY TIME”: SCARCE LIMITED FACSIMILE FIRST EDITION OF FAULKNER’S ONE-ACT PLAY, THE MARIONETTES, ONE OF ONLY 500 COPIES

FAULKNER, William. Marionettes. A Play in One Act. WITH: Wasson, Ben. A Memory of Marionettes. (Oxford Mississippi: Yoknapatawpha Press, 1975). Two volumes. Slim octavo, original half white cloth, facsimile paper boards; pp. (8), 1-51, (1). WITH: Slim octavo, original black paper wrappers, staple-bound as issued; pp: viii; original clamshell box.

Limited facsimile first edition of Faulkner’s very early play, number 171 of only 500 numbered copies (510 total), a scarce Yoknapatawpha Press edition detailing one of the very few manuscript copies that were individually hand-lettered and illustrated in 1920 by Faulkner, of which only four are known to survive, containing ten full-page illustrations, with the separate essay, “A Memory of Marionettes” by Ben Wasson, together as issued in the original clamshell box.

While a student at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner “joined an Oxford drama group called ‘The Marionettes,’ and he took the motif as the title and framing” for this very early play, which introduces a motif, that of marionettes, that recurs throughout his work (Hamblin et al., Faulkner Encyclopedia, 247). Influenced by the symbolist movement, The Marionettes “draws on elements of commedia dell’arte, or masked comedy, to relate a story of seduction and abandonment. Faulkner produced six or eight hand-lettered copies of the play and illustrated it with ten drawings by his own hand. Four copies survive” (Farnoli, et al, William Faulkner, 191). As critic Randall Wilhelm notes, The Marionettes stand as an “experience in the pictorial structuring of a narrative, a practice he would ultimately transfer to his fictional compositions, imbuing them with a uniquely visual aesthetic” (Faulkner Journal 19: Spring 2004). “The play was his own attempt at a private vision of beauty undone by betrayal and by time” (Blotner, 94). Petersen cites six as the number of manuscript versions crafted and illustrated by Faulkner in 1920. This limited facsimile first edition of only 500 numbered copies (with ten additional lettered copies) was issued the same year as a Charlottesville facsimile limited edition of another of those manuscripts, each handcrafted by Faulkner. This Yoknapatawpha Press edition notably features “even the imperfections of the paper-covered boards. Boxed with the essay ‘A Memory of Marionettes’ by Ben Wasson” (Petersen A65.2). Petersen A65.2.

A fine copy.