ISLANDIA

Wright, Austin Tappan

Published by Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1942

About this Item

A great utopian fantasy novel, comparable in conception and complexity to Tolkien's "Middle Earth." Wright, a law professor and legal scholar, created "Islandia" over many years in his free time after his academic duties at various U.S. universities, including Stanford, Michigan and Pennsylvania. When he died in an auto accident in New Mexico in 1931, he left a manuscript of over 2,300 pages plus appendices on a country called "Islandia," The appendices and a book-length general history of Islandia described language, culture, customs, population, historic peerage, and geography. His wife and daughter edited the work and trimmed it to the 1,013 pages published in the first edition in 1942. This copy is an early printing of the 1942 First Edition, lacking the publisher's colophon on the copyright page signifying the first printing. The original light tan buckram-covered boards are age and sun-darkened, particulary on the spine and along the edges, with some minor fraying of the cloth at the corners. The previous owner's bookplate is pasted to the front free endpage, concealing part of the Robert Graves-designed map on the pastedown. The front endpapers and first two dozen pages of text show a mild lower corner crease on the thin, WWII-era pages; text edges are lightly soiled and stained. Sorry, the dustjacket is missing. All that said, the book remains the 1942 first edition, complete and with the Leonard Bacon introduction. It is basically clean and unmarked, still tight and square. A great novel at a decent price.

Seller Inventory # 005297

Bibliographic Details

• Title: ISLANDIA
• Publisher: Farrar & Rinehart, New York
• Publication Date: 1942
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Good Plus
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fine Literature
  • Fantasy
  • Modern Novel