The Man Without Qualities.: Translated and with a foreword by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser.

London: Secker & Warburg,, 1953-54-60. A titan of modernism First editions in English, first impressions, of "one of the most prestigious novels of the 20th century... Some novelists excel at giving the reader the emotional feel of a character's mind (Dickens), others at the sensuous feel of a character's mind (Flaubert). Musil is wonderful at both" (Smiley). The first two volumes of Musil's unfinished masterpiece, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, were originally published in Germany in 1930 and 1933; the third volume was first published privately in Switzerland in 1943, the year following the author's death. The projected fourth volume of the present English edition was never issued, and so the (unfinished) ending to the novel was not published in English until 1995. Three volumes, octavo. Original green cloth, spines lettered in gilt on brown ground. With dust jackets. Bookseller's ticket (F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne) to vol. I front free endpaper. Cloth bright, slight lean to spines, light offsetting to endpapers, contents clean. A very nice, sharp set, in like dust jackets, vol. I jacket price-clipped with light marks to spine panel, short closed tear to head with small tape repair to verso, occasional nick and short closed tear, overall bright and presenting nicely. Jane Smiley, "Nowhere man", The Guardian, 17 June 2006.