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Call It Sleep
by Roth, Henry
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Portland, Oregon, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Robert O. Ballou, 1934. First edition. Hardcover. First edition, first printing. vi, 599 pp. Bound in publisher's blue cloth with navy stamping on spine, lettered in gilt, black topstain. Near Fine with slight sunning to spine, pages toned with age; author and bookseller Larry McMurtry's copy with his bookplate on paste down. In the original first state dust jacket with no blurb from The Minneapolis Star, Very Good+ with darkened spine panel, light edge wear, tiny chip along top edge of front flap has small piece of archival mending tissue on verso, otherwise unsophisticated. A very attractive example of the rare wrap-around pictorial jacket designed by the muralist Stuyvesant Van Veen. In a fall 2014 interview McMurtry called this copy's jacket "spectacular" and said he had to have for himself.
Nearly forgotten shortly after publication, this American Jewish classic was revived some thirty years later after receiving a front page review in The New York Times Book Review. Critics have since hailed the work as an overlooked masterpiece and "one of the great achievements of American writing this century" and the finest Jewish-American novel of the age (Parker & Kermode, 181).
Synopsis
Call It Sleep is a 1934 novel by Henry Roth. Time magazine described it as "The story of three years in the life of a sensitive Jewish slum-child, told with painstaking and pain-giving fidelity," in the February 25, 1935 edition. While the book sold poorly upon its initial publication, the book received a second life when it was reviewed by literary critic Irving Howe on the front page of The New York Times Book Review on October 25, 1964, and has since sold over a million copies.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 140945252
- Title
- Call It Sleep
- Author
- Roth, Henry
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First edition
- Publisher
- Robert O. Ballou
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1934
- Keywords
- New York, Lower East Side, Jewish immigrants, life novel, city, first
- Bookseller catalogs
- Literature;
Terms of Sale
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2010
Portland, Oregon
About Burnside Rare Books, ABAA
Burnside Rare Books specializes in literary first editions and works of cultural and historic significance. We are located in Portland, Oregon and welcome visitors by appointment.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Blurb
- The blurb refers to the commentary that appears on the dust jacket flaps or the rear of the dustjacket. In the case of a...
- First State
- used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Good+
- A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Verso
- The page bound on the left side of a book, opposite to the recto page.
- Bookplate
- Highly sought after by some collectors, a book plate is an inscribed or decorative device that identifies the owner, or former...
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