CONRAD, Joseph.

£28,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Under Western Eyes. First edition, a fine copy in the rare jacket from the distinguished library of Estelle Doheny, with her morocco book label. We know of only two other copies in the jacket, one we handled and another listed in auction records.Conrad wrote the first pages of the story, originally titled Razumov, in December 1907. He continued fervently writing the novel over the next three years, at one point suffering a weeks-long breakdown during which he conversed with the characters in Polish. He "dared to challenge (and arguably surpassed) Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment" and its publication confirmed "his stature as one of the greatest fiction-writers - and probably the greatest political novelist - in English" (ODNB).Provenance: Paul Lemperly (bookplate); Estelle Doheny (book label; sold in her sale, Christie's New York, 17 October 1988, lot 1206); Jeremy and Penny Martin (bookplate).

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