THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

London: Grant Richards, 1903.. [2],423,[1],12pp. Red cloth, lettered in gilt, t.e.g. Cloth a trace darkened at edges, small spot of white paint at crown of spine at the lower joint extending 1 cm, endsheets show the typical light foxing, short crack at toe of rear inner hinge, otherwise an unusually nice copy, very good or perhaps better, enclosed in cloth chemise with label, then enclosed in a later cloth slipcase and chemise. The A. Edward Newton - Barton Currie copy, with their distinctive bookplates on the front pastedown. First edition of Butler's posthumously published semi-autobiographical novel, and the work which will remain most frequently associated with his name in the popular mind. Edited, with a prefatory note, by R.A. Streatfeild. On the Modern Library's list of 100 best novels, noting: "Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, Butler's novel about the fortunes of the Pontifex family is a thinly veiled account of his own upbringing and a scathingly funny depiction of the hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life. George Bernard Shaw hailed the novel as 'one of the summits of human achievement' and William Maxwell claimed that it was the one Victorian novel he would save if his house caught on fire." Although printed in a large enough edition (1500 copies), which took some four years to sell, the physical construction of the book guaranteed that fine copies would not be the norm for succeeding generations of collectors. HOPPÉ 42. MODERN LIBRARY 100 NOVELS, 12.