The Sirens of Titan [First Hardcover]
$9,000 · Offered by Biblio
First edition · Signed · In dust jacket
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961. First hardcover edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. The first hardcover edition of Vonnegut's second novel, a satire set in outer space. According to the Ahearns' Author Price Guide, the print run was 2500 copies. This book was first published as a paperback original in 1959. "In this second novel, Vonnegut put a reverse-English spin on some standard gambits of SF, such as time and space travel, and this is less a straight SF novel than a jazz variation on/takeoff from the genre, anticipating the work of Douglas Adams.... The journeyings here aren't jaunty pulp adventures but are darkly disturbing."—Barron, Anatomy of Wonder. The book has an odd shape, narrower than a hardcover typically is, because it uses the typesetting from the massmarket paperback, adding space mostly to the top and bottom margins. 5-1/8 by 8-1/4 inches. 319, [1:blank] pages. First hardcover (stated first printing). A very good or better copy in blue cloth in a price-clipped jacket with a two-inch tear at the top of the front panel and chipping to the spine ends, strengthened on the back (verso) with tape. The white spine lettering is tanned. The jacket notes "previously published..." on the front flap; the Ahearns report copies without this statement (priority unknown). This copy is signed by Vonnegut on the front free endpaper. Rather uncommon signed. Housed in a clamshell box of the style commissioned for Vonnegut books by his silkscreen printer, Joe Petro
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
- Year: 1961
- Edition: First Edition
- Printing: first
- Binding: hardcover
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