En attendant Godot.

Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1952.

Price: $2,500.00


About the item

First trade edition (after 35 signed copies on large paper), one of 2,500 copies. 162, [4] pp. 8vo. Original printed wrappers, with author's photograph and blurbs on rear wrapper. A very good plus copy, the pages skillfully opened without damage to the margins, the spine toned and lightly cockled, and with narrow shadow along top edge of front wrapper, paper somewhat toned as usual. Federman & Fletcher 259; En français dans le texte, 395.

Item #345788

Beckett's masterpiece, and one of the defining works of the 20th century. A major innovation in modern drama, possibly the most important play of the 20th Century, and certainly the first theatrical success of the Theatre of the Absurd. Waiting for Godot was the play that secured Beckett's lasting fame. No matter that he'd been publishing since the 1920s or was Joyce's amanuensis. This play, in which "nothing happens," set him on a course that led to the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Overall, a very well-preserved copy: these trade editions from Les Éditions de Minuit are delicate in construction and notoriously fragile.