[Rarebooks] FS: Betrachtung: Kafka's first book 1 of 800.

[Kaaterskill Books]

We offer for sale:

Kafka, Franz. BETRACHTUNG. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, [1915]. 99 pp. Tall 
8vo. (24 x 15.6 cm). Quarter morocco with gilt titles over printed 
tan boards. Dietz 17. Hemmerle, p.19. Gobel (Der Kurt Wolff Verlag: 
1913-30) 91. Zweite Ausgabe.

The first published book by the most important writer of the 20th century.

Kurt Wolff received the eighteen small prose pieces, which only ran 
thirty-three pages in manuscript, in August of 1912 (see Kurt Wolff: 
A Portrait in Essays and Letters p. 53). The work was set in large 
type in order to reach ninety-nine pages and was published in an 
edition of 800 copies by Ernst Rowohlt in 1913. Rowohlt and Wolff 
parted company in 1915 at which time only 300 numbered copies had 
been sold. Wolff printed and inserted a new title page with his 
imprint and released the remaining 500 unnumbered copies of which 
this is one. Kafka had joked to Max Brod, to whom the work was 
dedicated, that the leading Prague Bookseller had sold eleven copies, 
and since he, Kafka, has purchased ten, he wondered who bought the 
eleventh. While Kurt Tucholsky gave it a good review, Robert Musil's 
was not especially sympathetic. Even today, critics often miss the 
crisp formality of the work and its sharp insights into the problems 
of modern society. Still, in 1922, Kafka wrote in an unmailed note to 
Brod: "The few unsold copies of Meditation need not be destroyed, I 
don't want to give anyone the trouble of pulping them, but none of 
these pieces should be reprinted."

A very good copy, spine ends professionally repaired, corners bumped 
with minor loss, endpapers renewed, small bell-shaped stamp to lower 
edge of title page, minor toning to rear endpapers, leaves clean and 
unmarked, binding solid. A nice example now protected in a clear 
archival jacket.  [29569] $5000.00


Regards,

Charles Kutcher
Kaaterskill Books
P.O. Box 122
East Jewett, NY 12424.
Phone: 518-589-0555.
Email: books at kaaterskillbooks.com
Member of I. O. B. A.

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