Beckett, Samuel.

8vo (187 x 124mm.), first edition of the author's first novel, one of 1,500 copies, 4pp. of publisher's advertisements at the end ("A Selection from the Spring List, 1938"), original green cloth lettered in gilt on the spine, original dust-jacket, preserved in green cloth chemise and green quarter morocco folding box by the Chelsea Bindery, some tiny nicks to edges of jacket, but otherwise an exceptionally fine copy

Federman & Fletcher 25

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First edition of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, in the extremely rare dust-jacket. No copy in such condition, with an unrestored jacket, has been sold at auction in recent times.

"If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the 'Naught is more real...' and the 'Ubu nihil vales...'  both already in Murphy...'' (Letter of Samuel Beckett to Sighle Kennedy, c.1971)

The author started Murphy in 1934, the year after his father's death, when he was living in London: the author's vision of the city provides much of its bleak landscape. The novel initially struggled to find a publisher, but eventually, after recommendations by the literary agent George Reavey and critic Herbert Read, and after substantial cuts to the original text, it was published by Routledge. As Ruby Cohn has observed, the novel contains in embryo all Beckett's obsessive themes, including human loneliness and the limits of intellection. It was also the first of his own works which he translated. "If you want to find the origins of En Attendant Godot look at Murphy" (Beckett, letter to Colin Duckworth, 1966).