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The Enormous Room

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The Enormous Room

by E.E. Cummings

  • Used
  • Very Good
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Very Good
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Item Price
$150.00
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About This Item

New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Octavo. Publisher's light brown buckram with black titles and single 1922 date on copyright page. First state with 'SHIT!' on page 219 which a prior owner attempted to erase but with the S and other letter outlines still visible. A clean, tight, unmarked copy. Scarce.

Synopsis

In 1917 young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room , his account of his four-month confinement, reads like a latter-day Pilgrim's Progress, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his existence: to lose everything is to become free, and so to be saved.  

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Details

Bookseller
Alba's Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
BN024772
Title
The Enormous Room
Author
E.E. Cummings
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First Edition
Publisher
Boni & Liveright
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1922
Size
Octavo
Keywords
France, Normandy, Red Cross, La Patrie, Concentration Camp, Freedom, War, Military

Terms of Sale

Alba's Books

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About the Seller

Alba's Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2020
Chicago, Illinois

About Alba's Books

In the mid '90s, Alba started getting calls from people who had a pronunciation problem. /

"Is this...Biblio...um...Biblio...die...sigh...uh?"

/ She enjoyed hearing the attempts. Her father's book business, Bibliodisia, was actually pronounced Biblio-DEE-zhee-uh. "It's a whole books and sex thing," she'd explain. "No, no, not books ABOUT sex. Books so awesome you want them like sex. Biblio plus aphrodisia equals Bibliodisia -- get it?" / Some did, some didn't.

/ Either way, her dad built a musty little empire with a sexy, funny, brilliant, and hard-to-pronounce name that boasted membership in the Midwest Antiquarian Booksellers Association (MWABA) and exhibited at Chicago book fairs such as the famed Printer's Row. / The way he puts it:

"OUR STOCK IS VARIED AND OF HIGH QUALITY, COMPRISED MAINLY OF HARDCOVER FIRST EDITIONS IN THE BEST AVAILABLE CONDITION FOR THEIR AGE. OUR PRICES VARY AND ARE CONSISTENTLY LOWER THAN WHAT YOU SEE ELSEWHERE, AND WE ARE HAPPY TO CONSIDER REASONABLE OFFERS FOR OUR HIGHER-PRICED BOOKS." (He's hard-of-hearing. Also, Cuban. Alba is Cuban too so she can make that joke.)

/ When he says "our" he means himself, his wife, and his two daughters. It has grown more and more into a family business every year, and now he's nearly ready to hand the reins over to one of his daughters. (Don't worry, the other one's a school teacher.) On Biblio, Alba manages Bibliodisia's inventory and sales under the considerably less sexy, funny, brilliant and hard-to-pronounce business name of Alba's Books.

/ And so another bookseller gets her wings. / The logo's a skyline bookshelf 'cause she's so the big city girl.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

First State
used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
Buckram
A plain weave fabric normally made from cotton or linen which is stiffened with starch or other chemicals to cover the book...
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Copyright page
The page in a book that describes the lineage of that book, typically including the book's author, publisher, date of...
Tight
Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
Octavo
Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...

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