Science fiction

1942 · 005297 — New York: Farrar & Rinehart 1942. First Edition. . Hardcover. Good Plus/No Jacket. A great utopian fantasy novel comparable in conception and complexity to Tolkien's "Middle Earth." Wright a law professor and legal scholar created "Islandia" over many years in his free time after his academic duties at various U.S. universities including Stanford Michigan and Pennsylvania. When he died in an auto accident in New Mexico in 1931 he left a manuscript of over 2300 pages plus appendices on a country called "Islandia" The appendices and a book-length general history of Islandia described language culture customs population historic peerage and geography. His wife and daughter edited the work and trimmed it to the 1013 pages published in the first edition in 1942. This copy is an early printing of the 1942 First Edition lacking the publisher's colophon on the copyright page signifying the first printing. The original light tan buckram-covered boards are age and sun-darkened particulary on the spine and along the edges with some minor fraying of the cloth at the corners. The previous owner's bookplate is pasted to the front free endpage concealing part of the Robert Graves-designed map on the pastedown. The front endpapers and first two dozen pages of text show a mild lower corner crease on the thin WWII-era pages; text edges are lightly soiled and stained. Sorry the dustjacket is missing. All that said the book remains the 1942 first edition complete and with the Leonard Bacon introduction. It is basically clean and unmarked still tight and square. A great novel at a decent price. <br/> <br/> Farrar & Rinehart hardcover