THE GOLEM: translated by Madge Pemberton.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., [1928]. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 5-288, inserted frontispiece with uncredited drawing of the Golem (this plate does not appear in the UK issue), original purple cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, top edge stained black, fore-edge untrimmed. First edition in English, U. S. issue (made up from British sheets). Meyrink's first novel "prefigures that disastrous climax [World War I] to a century of growth and change. The phantasmagorical, threatened Prague of this novel - its wainscots haunted by a Golem who is more like a psychic fog than an actual entity, and the false polder of its ghetto withering under the baleful light of a new century - makes THE GOLEM into a pure urban fantasy: a tale whose setting, like some vast subterranean edifice, seems literally alive, organic, all-encompassing, Gothic. It is, however, like most twentieth-century urban fantasies distinguished from its Gothic ancestors through a sense that the fall of the city will be a bad omen for its inhabitants, not a release. At the same time, the pending destruction of Prague (and all of Europe itself) is treated by Meyrink with a deep ambivalence, and his next novels all tend to present the apocalypse as an occult cleansing of the material world so that higher unions of the spirit can be achieved." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 642. "Key work of German Expressionism." – Barron (ed), Horror Literature 3-148. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1173. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 157. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature II, pp. 628-30. Bleiler (1978), p. 139. Reginald 10095. See Bloch (2002) 2141. Ink stamp with previous owner's name, address and other number to front free end paper, corner tips slightly bruised and spine ends a bit rubbed, Vroman's of Pasadena period bookstore label affixed to rear paste down, a clean very good copy in a good dust art deco dust jacket (designed by E. McKnight Kauffer) with large chip to the upper spine panel affecting the title and a chip to the base of the spine panel affecting the publisher title lettering, lower third to front panel split from spine, lower half of front panel fold split, several other minor chip with the front panel largely complete. (26900). Item #26900
Price: $375.00