Transition Literary Journal Complete Run

Complete first edition set of Eugene and Maria Jolas's landmark literary journal, which — along with Margaret Anderson's The Little Review — was one of the primary vehicles of Modernist and experimental writing.

• Sold as a set of 27 volumes, bound in 25 volumes.
• Edited by Eugene Jolas and Elliot Paul.
• Paris: Transition / Shakespeare and Company, 1927-1938.
• Various paginations (circa 150-325 pages most).
• Original typographic and pictorial wrappers all.

"Transition is important for its revaluation of romanticism, its campaign for a 'Revolution of the Word,' and its attempt to build a new philosophy from subliminal and preconscious materials." — Hoffman et al.

Over the course of 11 years, often times under great financial difficulty, they published a who's-who of modernist and experimental authors, alongside the work of Surrealist, Expressionist, and Dada artists: "Transition would explore the literary currents washing over Europe and America, present them all if they showed 'imaginative emancipation' as against descriptive naturalism" (Hoffman). 

Beginning with the very first issue, they published several portions of James Joyce's Work in Progress (Finnegans Wake), and notably, Jolas's English translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, which appeared in issues 24-26. Contributors across other issues include Kay Boyle, Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Hilda Doolittle, Paul Bowles, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Bob Brown, Malcolm Cowley, Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, André Breton, André Gide, Marcel Duchamp, and others.

A notoriously fragile publication, with complete sets in original condition seldom encountered in commerce, Transition is a difficult run to assemble — especially in original wrappers and in collectible condition. A rare monument to Modernism and the early avant garde.