Go Down Moses and Other Stories by FAULKNER William - (1942)

New York: Random House, (1942). First edition. three-quarter brick red cloth over salmon colored, textured paper boards, top edge gilt . Two tiny stains on foredge, otherwise an immaculate copy/in original tissue wrapper, housed in a custom made slipcase. Octavo. One of 100 copies, signed by the author Published May 11, 1942, by Random House, dedicated "To Mammy Caroline Barr, Mississippi, [1840-1940]: Who was born in slavery and who gave to my family a fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love." One of Faulkner's masterpieces, Go Down, Moses is an episodic novel consisting of short stories, most of which were published elsewhere. A difficult novel at times, the novel tells the story of the McCaslin family, beginning with the family patriarch Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, and his many descendants, both black and white. It is a noteworthy exploration of race, particularly as it is compounded with miscegenation, and is concerned also with the vanishing wilderness. Faulkner intended the stories as a novel and the words “and Other Stories” were dropped from the trade edition. This is the smallest limitation of any of Faulkner’s books and as such drastically limits the number of complete collections of his works[Petersen, Clark. Each In Its Ordered Place: A Faulkner Collector’s Notebook A.23.2a].