SONTAG, Susan.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Death Kit. First edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to her publisher on the half-title, "For Bob, with love and with thanks for your generous encouragement, Susan, Aug 1967". This is a premier association, illustrating the warm relationship between one of the most notable essayists of the 20th century and Robert Giroux, the "Golden Boy of publishing" (Kachka).Although Sontag later developed "an almost conspiratorial alliance" (Gottlieb) with Roger Farrar, Giroux was her first introduction to the behemoth publishing firm. Their first meeting was a memorable one. In 1961, Sontag walked into Giroux's office, "presented him with the partial manuscript of a convoluted dream narrative, and said, 'Jason Epstein told me you're the only editor in New York who will understand my novel'". Sontag became one of the firm's most illustrious names.Death Kit was Sontag's second novel, "one of the most interesting and successful experimental novels to appear in the 1960s", in the tradition of "the dream tale of Kafka or Borges, or the nightmarish works of Djuna Barnes, John Hawkes, and Anaïs Nin" (McCaffery).

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