JOHNSON, B. S. The Unfortunates. London: Panther Books in association with Secker and Warburg. 1969. 8vo. First edition. Twenty-seven unbound segments with bellyband, housed in the publisher’s clamshell box—the not-quite-proverbial book-in-a-box. A very good copy. The sections a trifle bumped to corners, the band with one tiny red mark and slight bump to rear edge. The box gently rubbed at corners, tips and joints, but a very pleasing example.
The author’s most famous work and certainly one of his best both for its emotional portrayal of friendship, death and solipsism, and for its playful innovation, the form following the notion that the reader read only the first and last segments in order, the remaining twenty-five to be read in any which order the reader chooses. Dismissed by many on publication, it has since been republished twice in its original format, and remains, in my mind, progressively cultish and increasingly scarce.
JOHNSON, B. S. The Unfortunates. London: Panther Books in association with Secker and Warburg. 1969. 8vo. First edition. Twenty-seven unbound segments with bellyband, housed in the publisher’s clamshell box—the not-quite-proverbial book-in-a-box. A very good copy. The sections a trifle bumped to corners, the band with one tiny red mark and slight bump to rear edge. The box gently rubbed at corners, tips and joints, but a very pleasing example.
The author’s most famous work and certainly one of his best both for its emotional portrayal of friendship, death and solipsism, and for its playful innovation, the form following the notion that the reader read only the first and last segments in order, the remaining twenty-five to be read in any which order the reader chooses. Dismissed by many on publication, it has since been republished twice in its original format, and remains, in my mind, progressively cultish and increasingly scarce.
