BECKETT, Samuel Proust. London: Chatto & Windus, 1931.
Small 8vo., cream boards decorated in brown ink to both covers and spine; in the matching blue and white printed dust jacket (2s. Net); pp. [ix], 2-72, [iv]; end papers lightly offset; edges with a few spots; the jacket a little browned to spine; else a near-fine copy in very good jacket.
First edition, first impression, with the misprint "hölder" for "holder" on p. 70.
Proust was Beckett's second published work, following a limited edition poetry pamphlet the previous year. It was written in the summer of 1930, during his stay at the École Normale in Paris. By the end of September, he delivered it by hand to Charles Prentice at Chatto and Windus. The book sold 2,600 copies by 1937, and the remaining 400 copies were remaindered by 1941. In retrospect, Beckett dismissed it as having been written in “cheap flashy philosophical jargon” although the work was widely celebrated.
An early study of Marcel Proust, whose theories of time were to play a large part in Beckett's own work.
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