'I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force'
As I Lay Dying.
New York: Jonathan Cape: Harrison Smith, [1930].
Price: $6,000.00
About the item
First edition, first state of initial capital ‘I’ on p. 11. There were 2522 printed in the first edition, of which 750 are the first impression, before the plate for page 11 was replaced. 254 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Original beige buckram, some toning to bottom of front panel and spine. Very good plus in dust jacket with some markings to cover small losses at folds).
Item #375862
Even though he'd just released The Sound and The Fury, Faulkner, a newlywed with two young stepchildren, was working to support his family as a fireman and night watchman at the University of Mississippi, and writing in the middle of his night shifts, deliberating that if he was to make his living as a writer, it was now or never. “I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force,” Faulkner wrote. “Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first words, I knew what the last word would be…. Before I began I said, I am going to write a book by which, at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again.”
Faulkner claimed he wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks, and that he didn't change a word in the one and only draft. He won the Nobel Prize in 1949.
