Beckett, Samuel.

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Description

More Pricks than Kicks. London: Chatto and Windus, 1934

8vo, first edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author to his cousin mollie roe ("for Molly | with fond love | 40 years later! | from Sam"), ownership inscription in pencil on front endpaper of Mollie Roe, original ocher cloth, spine lettered in blue, original dust-jacket (price 7s.6d.), some browning to half-title, light staining to a couple of pages, tear to H7 (into text but with no loss), jacket somewhat browned, and frayed and chipped at edges

Literature

Federman & Fletcher 16 ("The volume published by Chatto and Windus sold only 500 copies out of 1,500 printed, and is now rare").

Catalogue Note

the author's first published book of fiction, containing ten satirical stories, such as Dante and the Lobster, Love and Lethe, The Smeraldina's Billet Doux and Draff, about a young Dublin intellectual called Belacqua Shuah. "Mr Beckett makes a great deal of everything; that is his art...The author has been influenced by Mr James Joyce, but the spirit in which he writes is rather that of Sterne, and he reduces everything, or raises it, as the case may be, to intellectual fantasy. He has the particularity of both writers; the toasting of a slice of bread, or the purchase and cooking of a lobster, can become matters of intellectual interest and importance to him..." (Edwin Muir, review in Listener, 4 July 1934).

Beckett did not permit republication of the stories until 1966, when Calder & Boyers were authorised to issue a limited "Special edition Hors Commerce for Scholars". The next trade edition did not appear until 1970 (but see lot 96 for galley proofs of an earlier abandoned edition).

an extremely rare title in dust-jacket.