RIMBAUD: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF A REBEL - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Edmund White - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE

White, Edmund (Author) & Rimbaud, Arthur (Subject)

ISBN 10: 1934633151 / ISBN 13: 9781934633151

Published by New York, NY: Atlas & Company, 2008, 2008

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 192 pages. Published in 2008. Brief Biography on subject. One of Edmund White's finest achievements. 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 by a small independent press. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Edmund White's "Rimbaud: The Double Life of A Rebel". A succinct and original perspective on one of the founders of literary modernism: A brief biography, fittingly enough, on the briefest of literary lives. Arthur Rimbaud famously wrote two, unsurpassable masterpieces BEFORE he was twenty-one years old: "A Season In Hell" (1873) and "Illuminations" (1886), then he abandoned poetry altogether. His unique case remains proof that the point of being a writer is to write a masterpiece, not necessarily a body of work, and in Rimbaud's case, to give up writing thereafter. Edmund White's books on Genet, a massive volume, and Proust, a brief one, complete a great American writer's homage to French literature as no other "foreigner" writer has achieved. An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Edmund White's signature on this copy is one of the most beautiful we have ever seen. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of very few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are in multiple subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. 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 greatest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 1934633151.

Seller Inventory # 24023

Bibliographic Details

• Title: RIMBAUD: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF A REBEL - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Edmund White - SIGNED ON THE TITLE PAGE
• Publisher: New York, NY: Atlas & Company, 2008
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934633151
• ISBN 13: 9781934633151
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author

About this title

Synopsis

The distinguished biographer, novelist, and memoirist Edmund White brings his literary mastery to a new biography of Arthur Rimbaud.

Poet and prodigy Arthur Rimbaud led a life that was startlingly short, but just as dramatically eventful and accomplished. Even today, over a century after his death in 1891, his visionary poetry has continued to influence everyone from Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan to Patti Smith. His long poem A Season in Hell (1873) and his collection Illuminations (1886) are essential to the modern canon, marked by a hallucinatory and hypnotic style that defined the Symbolist movement in poetry. Having sworn off writing at the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud drifted around the world from scheme to scheme, ultimately dying from an infection contracted while running guns in Africa. He was thirty-seven.

Edmund White writes with a historian's eye for detail, driven by a genuine personal investment in his subject. White delves deep into the young poet's relationships with his family, his teachers, and his notorious affair with the more established poet Paul Verlaine. He follows the often elusive (sometimes blatant) threads of sexual taboo that haunt Rimbaud's poems (in those days, sodomy was a crime) and offers incisive interpretations of the poems, using his own artful translations to bring us closer to the mercurial poet.

About the Author

Raised in the Midwest and Texas, Edmund White is a renowned author and literary and cultural critic. He is the author of biographies of Genet and—in the Penguin Lives series—of Proust, and of eight novels including Hotel de Dream. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He teaches at Princeton and lives in New York City.