ROMAINS, Jules. Men of Good Will #6: To the Gutter and To the Stars. Trans. from the French by Gerard Hopkins. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1937. 8vo. First American edition. Publisher’s attractive mauve cloth lettered and decorated in gilt and black, in the striking dust jacket designed by George Salter. A fine example, the cloth clean and bright, gently bumped to the corners and tips, topstain bright, the contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped and fine. A fabulous example overall.
The sixth US volume in the author’s epic twenty-eight book sequence capturing in absolute maximalism the interwar period across Europe. At 2.1 million words, it is one of the longest novels ever written. While the original French titles were published in single volumes, the British and US editions were published in dual volumes; this sixth volume contains books eleven and twelve, ‘To the Gutter’ and ‘To the Stars’. The cycle in its totality is the primary text in the literary theory of unanimism, the philosophy developed by Romains himself which configures the shared experience—of groups, communities, nations and epochs—as the prevailing consciousness rather than a single experience—hence its maximalist narrative, skipping from one person to the next instead of a central protagonist. Romains was a perennial flirt with the Nobel Prize for Literature—sixteen nominations, no wins. Uncommon in such exquisite condition.
ROMAINS, Jules. Men of Good Will #6: To the Gutter and To the Stars. Trans. from the French by Gerard Hopkins. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1937. 8vo. First American edition. Publisher’s attractive mauve cloth lettered and decorated in gilt and black, in the striking dust jacket designed by George Salter. A fine example, the cloth clean and bright, gently bumped to the corners and tips, topstain bright, the contents fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped and fine. A fabulous example overall.
The sixth US volume in the author’s epic twenty-eight book sequence capturing in absolute maximalism the interwar period across Europe. At 2.1 million words, it is one of the longest novels ever written. While the original French titles were published in single volumes, the British and US editions were published in dual volumes; this sixth volume contains books eleven and twelve, ‘To the Gutter’ and ‘To the Stars’. The cycle in its totality is the primary text in the literary theory of unanimism, the philosophy developed by Romains himself which configures the shared experience—of groups, communities, nations and epochs—as the prevailing consciousness rather than a single experience—hence its maximalist narrative, skipping from one person to the next instead of a central protagonist. Romains was a perennial flirt with the Nobel Prize for Literature—sixteen nominations, no wins. Uncommon in such exquisite condition.
