First Book of Berlin Stories, Inscribed
The Last of Mr. Norris
Publication: New York: William Morrow and Company, 1935. First US edition.
Notes: An inscribed copy of the novel that would become the first half of Isherwood's enduring Berlin Stories.
Published in February in the UK by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press as Mr. Norris Changes Trains, the novel appeared in the US a few months later under this new title. The novel is set at the end of Weimar Germany, just before Hitler came to power. The title character was based on Gerald Hamilton, a gay man (like Isherwood), who conned and swindled his way across Berlin.
[6], 279, [3:blank] pages.
Edition + Condition: First American edition (first printing, with no indication of later printings). Light gray cloth foxed and rather grubby; endpapers browned. The dust jacket is about very good, missing small pieces from the corners and at the top of the spine. There are splits to the flap folds as well. The book is inscribed to the bookseller-collector Maurice Neville, "For Maurie, with my best wishes, Christopher Isherwood."
Given the grubbiness of the cloth, it's possible that the jacket was married to the book, but some time ago.
Item No: #73927
Price: $1,800