Less Than One Selected Essays, First Edition (13 results)

Paperback. Condition: Very Good+. First Edition Thus; Eighth Printing. Very Good+ in Wraps: the binding is ever so slightly weak and opens a little too readily between pages 130 and 131; a hint of wear to the front corner tips; the binding leans very slightly but remains secure; the text is clean. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of underlining, hi-lighting, notations, or marginalia. Free of any ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, plates, or labels. A handsome reading copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing the mildest wear and minor, unobtrusive imperfections. Bright and clean. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo (8.25 x 5.5 x 1.35 inches) . Language: English. Weight: 20.5 ounces. Trade Paperback. Brodsky, a brilliant poet and sensitive translator, is also a stunning essayist. His first volume of essays not only evinces a supple, witty mastery of the English language, but provides deeply illuminating insights into the Russian literary tradition and political climate and modern poetry and poetics, in addition to compelling autobiographical material. The collection is a Baedeker to the world's poetry, as exemplified by essays on Cavafy, Montale, Walcott and lengthy fascinating dissections of individual poems by Tsvetaeva and Auden. Brodsky says that he learned English to find himself "in closer proximity" to Auden, and it is a hallmark of his success that this collection is reminiscent of Auden's own essays and suggests a comparable scope. Highly recommended. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 501 pages.

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. First Thus. Stiff blue and tan wraps. Essentially as issued, with slight surface rubbing to covers; square, uncreased bindings, clean and unmarked interiors. 7th ptg.: 1996. [vii],501 pp. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Book.

Paperback. Condition: nrVG. 1st Edition. From the library of Donald Davie 1922-1995, poet and literary critic, and his wife Doreen. Her signature at start of book. With some annotation by her. Book is in near very good condition with minor but just noticeable signs of wear and/or age.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Minor wear & sunning to binding around edges. Light wear and soiling to edges of text block. Text is unmarked. Dj lightly worn & toned in a mylar cover.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. First Edition. First edition. Minor shelf and handling wear, overall a clean solid copy with minimal signs of use. Binding is tight and structurally sound. Clean interior pages. Secure packaging for safe delivery. 1.57.

Condition: Good. 8vo., 501 pp., Very Good, Black Cloth on Beige Boards, Dust Jacket with light damage, minor staining & rubbing; edge wear, shelf wear. First Edition.

First edition. 501p, cloth, DW, minor pencilling, previous owner's name on endpaper, Near FINE/Near FINE.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 1st edition 1st printing - minor stain to back of dust jacket at spine and at cover - slight staining to closed page edge - otherwise dust jacket and cover fine binding strong contents clean - now in mylar cover - enjoy.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good-. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+. 1st Edition US. 501 pages in very good condition. Pages have penciling in the margins and underlining throughout. Previous owner's signature on the ffep. Page edges are smudged. Quarterbound in black cloth and beige paper with gilt titles on the spine. Lightly worn around the edges. Dustjacket in very good condition. Lightly soiled, lightly worn around the edges. 1ST US EDITION. NPC. VG-/VG+. Book.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. William Diepraam (Author photo) (illustrator). [10], 501, [1] pages. Underlining and marks on pages 153, 159,187, and on page 279, and possibly elsewhere. Small ink mark on bottom edge. Less Than One is, in the broadest sense, an intellectual autobiography. The volume includes Brodsy's remarkable essays on poetry and poetics. In his considerations of the work of Russian writers such as Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, and Mendelstam, as well as Western poets such as Auden, Montale, Cavafy, and Derek Walcott, Brodsky has produced compelling, luminous accounts of twentieth-century poetry. In "Catastrophes in the Air," Brodsky addresses the history and future of Russian prose, providing an original description of the life and death of a literary tradition. Inevitably, this book is also about politics. And in such essays as "On Tyranny" and "Flight from Byzantium," Brodsky offers profound meditations on history and the modern age. Finally. the book is a personal memoir. In the title essay and "In a Room and a Half," the piece which ends the book, Brodsky has written a eulogy to his native city and to the memory of his parents. In 1986, his collection of essays, Less Than One, won the National Book Critics Award for Criticism and he was given an honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (24 May 1940 - 28 January 1996) was a Russian poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly advised" to emigrate) from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991. According to Professor Andrey Ranchin of Moscow State University: "Brodsky is the only modern Russian poet whose body of work has already been awarded the honorary title of a canonized classic. Brodsky's literary canonization is an exceptional phenomenon. No other contemporary Russian writer has been honored as the hero of such a number of memoir texts; no other has had so many conferences devoted to them". In 1963, Brodsky's poetry was denounced by a Leningrad newspaper as "pornographic and anti-Soviet". His papers were confiscated, he was interrogated, twice put in a mental institution and then arrested. He was charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities in a trial in 1964, finding that his series of odd jobs and role as a poet were not a sufficient contribution to society. Brodsky became a cause célèbre in the West also, when a secret transcription of trial minutes was smuggled out of the country, making him a symbol of artistic resistance in a totalitarian society. On 4 June 1972,Soviet authorities put him on a plane for Vienna, Austria. He never returned to Russia. In Austria, he met Carl Ray Proffer and W. H. Auden, who facilitated Brodsky's transit to the United States and proved influential to Brodsky's career. Proffer, of the University of Michigan and one of the co-founders of Ardis Publishers, became Brodsky's Russian publisher from this point on. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. First edition Book in fine condition Wrapper in very good condition. Minor creasing to tip of front corner and corresponding tip of rear corner.

First edition. 8vo, quarterbound black cloth over beige boards with gilt-stamped spines, pp. 501. Near fine with barest shelfwear and faint foxing on page fore edges; in near fine dust jacket with slight toning along flap edges.