GRENDEL

London: Andre Deutsch, 1971. First British Edition. Cloth. Very Fine/Very Fine. Emil Antonucci. 8vo, orange cloth with gold spine lettering, illustrated with frontispiece & intricate line drawings as chapter headings by Emil Antonucci, Mylar-protected blue dust jacket (unclipped) with illustration of Grendel's head by Antonucci, 174 pages. Gardner retold the classic Old English ["Viking"] story of Beowulf from the monster Grendel's grotesque perspective. A tour de force! John Gardner (1933 - 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view. A tour de force! Gardner's best-known novels include The Sunlight Dialogues, about a disaffected policeman asked to engage a madman fluent in classical mythology; Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf legend from the monster's point of view, with an existential subtext; and October Light, about an embittered brother and sister living and feuding with each other in rural Vermont (the novel includes an invented "trashy novel" the woman reads). This last book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Gardner was killed in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982.--Wikipedia abridged. In Exceptional Condition! Very light sunning to spine of dj. In Exceptional Condition!