FANNY: A FICTION by White, Edmund - 2003

New York City, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 369 pages. The author's eighth novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Edmund White's "Fanny". Dedicated to Joyce Carol Oates, and marks the third phase in Edmund White's brilliant career: His permanent return to the United States (after twenty years of self-imposed exile in France) and his entry into American academe, as the Director of Literary Studies at Princeton University. It is curious that almost all blurbs and reviews of "Fanny" call it a "departure" for Edmund White in the sense that it is a historical novel, a "romance" in the manner of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whereas he is celebrated for his fictional accounts of contemporary gay life in America. The fact remains that two of his greatest works are historical novels: "Forgetting Elena" (1973) and "Caracole" (1985), which Vladimir Nabokov, Harold Bloom, and Cynthia Ozick regard as masterpieces, and not counting the explosively erotic historical fantasy, "Nocturnes For The King of Naples" (1978). "Fanny" would therefore be, at the very least, the third historical novel from his masterly hands. "Transports us to a past that ironically illuminates the present" (Ann Beattie). An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. <b><i> This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in ink-pen on the title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page, as copies available online are. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. </b></i> Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet: A Biography". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0060004843.