The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights (Scarce true 1930 UK First Edition)

CANKAR, Ivan The Bailiff Yerney and His Rights London : John Rodker, 1930. First edition in English. Octavo, original cream cloth boards lettered in red to the spine and front board; in the original pictorial dust jacket, printed in black and red with a design incorporating the tag "A Slovene Tolstoi" to head and foot; translated from the Slovene by Sidonie Yeras and H. C. Sewell Grant, with an introduction on Cankar by Janko Lavrin. The first English translation of Ivan Cankar's Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica, the best-known work of the man generally regarded as the foundational figure of modern Slovene literature. Cankar (1876–1918), a contemporary and admirer of the great Russian and Scandinavian social realists, wrote this novella, a story of a wronged farmhand's doomed pursuit of justice against his employers, as a searing allegory of exploitation and futile rebellion; it remains a set text in Slovenia today and lent its central figure's name, "Martin Krpan"-like, to the Slovene language itself as a byword for the powerless labourer. This Rodker edition, issued with Janko Lavrin's introductory essay on Cankar's life and place in Slavic letters, appears to be the first appearance of the novella in English and was published by John Rodker, the avant-garde poet-publisher better known for his editions of Joyce, Pound, and Eliot under the Ovid Press imprint. Surviving copies of this small-press first with original jackets are scarce. The jacket cover evidently drawn and lettered specifically for the book rather than pulled from a house style, was never likely to have been printed in great quantity or to have survived the decades since in any number. It is the single most distinctive and fragile element of the book, and the reason a complete jacketed copy commands real interest beyond the text alone. Boards with some discolouration, apparently from a combination of fading and light foxing; text block otherwise clean and tight, with foxing confined to the inside endpapers and the top edge. First penicilled name of previous owner on free front endpaper. Dust jacket discoloured and toned at the edges of the pictorial panel, with two small holes to the spine panel as illustrated. A good, complete copy of a scarce small-press first English edition of an important work of Central European modernism, honestly described and priced.…