[Rarebooks] FS: Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, SIGNED FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING

[Allington Books]

Allington Books <allingtonbooks at gmail.com>
Sat, Jan 26, 8:48 AM (2 days ago)
to
*TEMPORARILY GREATLY DISCOUNTED*. * WAS $1,350. Now $475 on our site.  *
Roth, Henry [Geismar, Maxwell: Critical Introduction; Levin, Meyer: A
Personal Appreciation; Ribalow, Harold: The History of Henry Roth and Call
it Sleep]
Call it Sleep [Signed]

Patterson, NJ: Pageant Books, Inc., 1960. First Edition, First
Printing.Hardcover.
GREATLY REDUCED. WAS $1,350. A Very Good to Very Good + copy of the first
Pageant Books edition (some toning to the edges, tiny to small rubs through
to the leading board corners and some wear to the spine's black portion,
eraser mark to the front free endpaper's upper right corner, small stain to
the rear free endpaper's leading edge) in a Very Good or better dust jacket
(slight wear and minor toning as well as an approximately one inch closed
tear to the front panel near the flap fold and paralleled on the flap
itself creating an incipient chip but holding, spine panel lightly sunned),
INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY HENRY ROTH on the front free endpaper to Elizabeth
Mann as follows: "For Elizabeth Mann // Permit my tribute // Henry Roth".
Roth's writing is centered on the immigrant experience, particularly on the
experience of Jewish-Americans in Depression-Era America. He also has been
hailed as a chronicler of New York city life. A coming-of-age story set in
the early Twentieth Century, "Call it Sleep", Roth's Debut Book, and is
centered around the turbulent life of David Schearl, a young boy growing up
in the Jewish immigrant slum of New York's Lower East Side. First published
in 1934, the novel received mixed reviews and did not sell well. However,
in the 1960s the novel was republished in paperback by Avon Books and sold
over a million copies and spent and many weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list. Critics then hailed it as a Depression-era Masterpiece and
the tale, once considered a failure, was resurrected after spending about a
quarter of a Century in oblivion. Pageant Books reissued the novel in
hardcover, a copy of which is being presented here. Interestingly, Roth was
not very pleased by his novel's new and unexpected success as it brought
him unwanted attention. Roth then entered a long period of writer's block
(during which period he worked as a tool and gauge maker, a woodsman, a
schoolteacher, a psychiatric attendant in the state mental hospital, a
waterfowl farmer, and a Latin and math tutor) and in 1979 he turned again
to working on his second novel, "Mercy of a Rude Stream", a monumental epic
published in four volumes: "A Star Shines over Mt. Morris Park", "A Diving
Rock on the Hudson", "From Bondage", and "Requiem for Harlem", a work in
four volumes which critic David Mehegan described as a "landmark of the
American literary century". [For "From Bondage", Roth won the 1979 Isaac
Bashevis Singer Prize in Literature. The book also was a finalist for the
1979 National Book Critics Circle's Fiction Prize.] Signed copies of "Call
it Sleep" are extraordinarily uncommon. A nice copy of a highly-notable
work, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY HENRY ROTH. QUITE UNCOMMON INDEED. Very good
+ / very good. Item #914

Price: $475.00



Stephen Johnson
Allington Antiquarian Books, LLC
Rare and Collectible Books, both Antiquarian and Modern
www.allingtonbooks.com
336-414-0435