Jun 20, 2013 - Sale 2319

Sale 2319 - Lot 224

Price Realized: $ 16,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
ORWELL'S FIRST NOVEL IN SCARCE DUST JACKET ORWELL, GEORGE. Burmese Days. Tall 8vo, orange cloth lettered in black, covers bright; dust jacket, mild browning to spine panel, small chips at fold corners, some chipping at edges with 1" vertical tear at bottom left of spine panel, small chip at head of spine panel with partial loss to first letter in title; top margin corner of a few pages lightly creased, contents clean. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934

Additional Details

first edition of orwell's first novel seldom seen in dust jacket. Published a year before the edition issued in London. According to Alan C. Smith, the NY edition was 2000 copies: "Orwell's first novel had a chequered publishing history. Some of the fictional names and incidents were uncomfortably close to fact, and several English publishers fought shy of the book, in spite of the success of 'Down and Out in Paris and London' (1933). Some textual changes were made, and the book was first published by Harpers ... after the English publication of his second novel ("A Clergyman's Daughter" in 1935), Orwell consented to further textual changes, and the book was eventually published by Gollancz in an edition of 2500 copies." Only three copies of this edition are listed in published auction records for the last 35 years.