Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana

8vo. Original blue-green cloth, upper cover and spine lettered in gilt (rear hinge starting, a faint narrow dampstain along extreme lower edges of sides); SUPPRESSED PICTORIAL DUST JACKET, this jacket supplied from another copy (light chipping with small losses at spine and fore-edge corners, split to front joint of spine panel near foot, lightly soiled); morocco-backed folding case. Provenance: Norman Unger (author's inscription); Maurice Neville (sold, his sale, Sotheby's, 1 January 2004, lot 170.

THE UNGER-NELVILLE COPY.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY MAUGHAM on the half-title to a New York book collector: "For Norman Unger, I wrote this novel in 1912 & 1913, corrected the proof in Flanders during the winter of 1914, & it was published in 1915 in a world too busy with war to both much about it. W. Somerset Maugham."

IN THE RARE SUPPRESSED DUST JACKET, one of only four copies known to us: the University of Texas copy; the Zenter copy, sold at auction in 2010; the R.A. Gekoski copy, sold by a London bookseller; and this copy, last sold at Sotheby’s in 2004. This jacket comes from the Marjorie Wiggin Prescott copy (sale, Christie's, Manson & Woods, 7 February 1981, lot 244, to Nick Wilder, later to Neville). Stott notes that "The first dust jacket was rejected and a further issue (5,000) [for the 5,000 copies] printed and delivered to the binder a day before publication [13 August]. The publisher states, however, that 440 copies of the book had been received prior to this date, and it is possible that these copies had the original jacket on them. Miss Callender, a late Director of Heinemann, says that she believes the first jacket was cancelled because the ‘club-foot was on the wrong foot’ [it should be on the left] which corroborates the text. It shows Philip Carey [against a cream background] wearing a black cape, and green trousers and on his head is a black artist’s homburg with a wide brim with a red cravat ... the drawing is signed ‘M.B.’” This copy is unpriced on the spine and lacks the price sticker found on later examples. The lower panel lists only six titles, whereas other copies are known with eight. Stott himself could not find an example of either issue at the time of the 1956 edition of his bibliography, underlining the fact that the dust jacket for Of Human Bondage is of the utmost rarity in any form and in any condition. Stott A21b.