Norris, Frank

10 volumes, 8vo (8 1/2 x 55 3/4 in.; 218 x 146 mm). Title-pages printed in red and black, photogravure frontispiece portrait of Norris. Publisher's art vellum, front covers stamped in gilt with hexagonal device inclosing Norris's initials and three shafts of wheat, a single gilt fillet and a russet paper rule are on the spine side of both covers, russet paper corners, smooth spines gilt, plain endpapers, top edges gilt, others uncut and partially unopened; slightest rubbing or bumping to extremities of a few volumes. Publisher's printed dust-jackets; spines lightly soiled and faded.

BAL 15048, 15049

10 volumes, 8vo (8 1/2 x 55 3/4 in.; 218 x 146 mm). Title-pages printed in red and black, photogravure frontispiece portrait of Norris. Publisher's art vellum, front covers stamped in gilt with hexagonal device inclosing Norris's initials and three shafts of wheat, a single gilt fillet and a russet paper rule are on the spine side of both covers, russet paper corners, plain endpapers, top edges gilt, others uncut and partially unopened; slightest rubbing or bumping to extremities of a few volumes. Publisher's printed dust-jackets; spines lightly soiled and faded.
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The Argonaut Manuscript Edition, number 158 of 245 sets. A pristine set, containing the final leaf from the autograph manuscript of McTeague (1899), the basis for Erich von Stroheim's seminal film Greed (1924). The manuscript leaf is taken from a large ruled ledger (16 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.; 410 x 266 mm), numbered at the top in red ink 311 and in pencil 319; it is preserved in the original printed envelope issued with the set. The manuscript—comprising approximately 335 words, including a six-word marginal emendation and 22 words ruled through by Norris—describes the climatic scene of the novel, in which McTeague kills his former friend Marcus Schouler and finds himself handcuffed to the corpse while "all about him, vast, interminable, stretched the measureless leagues of Death Valley." The manuscript text, with the incorporation of Norris's emendations and a few penciled corrections by a copyeditor, reads exactly as the published text with the exception of a couple of incidental punctuation marks.

The set includes introductions by H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Christopher Morley. The tenth volume, edited by Norris's brother Charles, is the first edition of Collected Writings Hitherto Unpublished in Book Form.