First Persons by Austin Wright (10 results)

Hardcover. Condition: USED Good.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Remainder punch hole on endpaper.

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. First Edition. The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Hardcover/Hardback. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. Very good condition stated first edition hardback signed "with regards" by author on title page. Former owner's bookplate on pasted-down endsheet. Base edges coverboards rubbed with rub/soiling marks on base outside textblock at outer edge, and smudges top textblock from dust accumulation. Binding very tight as though unread. Top/base spine bumped. Sunfaded. Dust jacket near fine in protective archival sleeve. signed by author or artist.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Publisher: Harper & Row, NY, 1973. First Edition, First Printing. NEAR FINE hardcover book in NEAR FINE dust-jacket. Not remainder marked. Not price-clipped. Not a book club edition. Not an ex-library copy. All of our books with dust-jackets are shipped in fresh, archival-safe mylar protective sleeves.

Hardcover. Dust Jacket Condition: dj. First edition. The first person is the narrator who appears throughout, guiding the reader with one hand while throwing sand in his eyes with the other, since all of this is full of contrivances and connivances and interpolations designed to show that what one invents or experiences is perhaps the same thing. Author Wright is an English professor and so is timid Ralph Hathorne Burr who may or may not be the narrator after he becomes the "protagonist of a novel about murder." In fact, hypothecating here, deviating there, one is left wondering about the murder itself -- is it that of the old woman whom at first he stones, with fossils, in a wood -- Burnet Woods of course -- or a man who is killed at the same site or perhaps even his wife Cynthia, whom he permitted to die of her own hand? Other things do happen -- he becomes involved with a young woman half his age who fulfills his "sectsual needs" and then impels him to confess to a crime which of course she doesn't believe in -- and he has an almost fatal heart attack -- and, and, and, by the close you may find yourself lost in Burnet Woods with some of these mystifications. Wright also takes his chances with asides, or questions, "which might tend to alienate the novel's readers. . . rather than evoking the kind of compassionate sympathy you no doubt would prefer." Particularly with as prim a professorial type as Ralph Hathorne Burr. A near fine copy in a very good plus jacket.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. 288 pages. First edition, first printing. Dust jacket design by Wendell Minor. His second novel. Fine book in a fine dust jacket. A beautiful copy!

1973, 1st Edition. (Cloth) Very good plus in very good plus dust jacket. 288pp. Some minor edge wear and rubs to unclipped wrapper. Tail shows a trace of fading. ". She thought his death was premature and unfair.".

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition/First Printing. This is a beautiful copy of "First Persons" by Austin Wright. Ralph Burr is a lonely middle-aged widower, a professor of Romantic literature, who discovers one morning that he has become the protagonist of a novel. In this role, he commits a murder, tries to conceal it, runs from the police, gets involved with a sexy young girl, suffers a heart attack, and has other interesting adventures.

Hard Cover. First Edition. 1st printing. NF/NF. Signed by Author.