STERNE, Laurence A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Paris: The Black Sun Press, Éditions Narcisse.1929.
8vo. Original printed wrappers with fold-over flaps enclosed in a pristine glassine dust jacket; pages untrimmed; housed in publisher's green and gold slipcase; pp. [viii], 191, [v]; glassine dustjacket browned at spine and chipped at head and tail with some loss; split at top edge; otherwise very good.
One of the original total print run of 400 copies of Sterne's first person accounts of the exploits of a British tourist. The first edition featuring several illustrations, including five full plates, by the Russian artist Polia Chentoff.
Laurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and humorist of the eighteenth century, perhaps best known for his novel A Sentimental Journey (1768), ‘a light-hearted comedy of moral sentiments’. (Britannica).
The Black Sun was an English-language press based in Paris in the 1920's. Founded in 1927 by American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby, it published the early works of influential literary figures such as Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Crane, D. H. Lawrence, and Hemingway. The books, all handset, were typographically impeccable and beautifully bound.
Sterne has a particular relationship to Sotheran's with Sotheran's acquiring and offering for sale the library of Sterne after his death in 1777. Sterne left no will and the sale of his library was likely an effort to pay off his debts.
Minkoff A-22.
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