The Circus of Dr. Lao

VERY GOOD+ condition — SLIPCASE: Minor wear w/loose seams, bottom rear. BOARDS: Very good condition. No issues. BOOK: Very good condition. No issues. Please inspect photos closely for condition details. THIS IS A LARGE BOOK.

Here on offer is an exceptionally nice copy of Charles Finney's award-winning novel, The Circus of Dr. Lao, a fantastical and macabre work which won the inaugural National Book Award for Most Original Book of 1935. This copy is a limited edition, numbered and signed by the artist, Claire Van Vliet, and published by the Limited Editions Club in 1982. The book is housed in a hardshell slipcase and includes the LEC monthly newsletter for this title.

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• The Limited Editions Club was a subscription-based book club founded in 1929 by George Macy (1900-1956) to publish finely made and finely illustrated limited editions of the classics of literature - and of a few carefully selected contemporary titles, such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Most of the books were beautifully illustrated with original artwork by leading book illustrators. In most cases, the illustrators handsigned each copy of the books that they illustrated for the LEC.

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"Abalone, Arizona, is a sleepy southwestern town whose chief concerns are boredom and surviving the Great Depression. That is, until the circus of Dr. Lao arrives and immensely and irrevocably changes the lives of everyone drawn to its tents.

Expecting a sideshow spectacle, the citizens of Abalone instead confront and learn profound lessons from the mythical made real--a chimera, a Medusa, a talking sphinx, a sea serpent, witches, the Hound of the Hedges, a werewolf, a mermaid, an ancient god, and the elusive, ever-changing Dr. Lao. The circus unfolds, spinning magical, dark strands that ensnare the town's populace: the sea serpent's tale shatters love's illusions; the fortune-teller's shocking pronouncements toll the tedium and secret dread of every person's life; sensual undercurrents pour forth for men and women alike; and the dead walk again.

Dazzling and macabre, literary and philosophical, The Circus of Dr. Lao has been acclaimed as a masterpiece of speculative fiction and influenced such writers as Ray Bradbury."

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Charles Grandison Finney (December 1, 1905 – April 16, 1984) was an American news editor and fantasy novelist, the great-grandson of evangelist Charles Grandison Finney. His first novel and most famous work, The Circus of Dr. Lao, won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1935.

Finney was born in Sedalia, Missouri, and served in Tientsin, China, with the U.S. Army 15th Infantry Regiment (E Company) from 1927 to 1929.

In his memoirs, he notes that The Circus of Dr. Lao was conceived in Tientsin during 1929. After the Army, he worked as an editor for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona from 1930 to 1970. . . .

Finney's work, especially The Circus of Dr. Lao, has been influential on subsequent writers of fantasy. Ray Bradbury admired the novel and anthologized it in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes shares with Dr. Lao the setting of a supernatural circus.

The above text was taken from, respectively, University of Nebraska Press (via Google Books) and Wikipedia.