A Room of One's Own

One of 492 copies SIGNED. Bound in publisher’s original cloth burgundy boards. No interior markings but for the author’s signature in her characteristic purple ink on the half-title page. As stated in the Colophon: “Of this book, four hundred and ninety copies, of which four hundred fifty are for sale, have been printed by Robert S. Josephs, in October 1929. Distributed in America by Random House, and in Great Britain by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, London. Each copy signed by the author. Numbers one to one hundred inclusive are reserved for Great Britain. This is number 159.” Possibly the [noted rare book collector] Frank Altschul copy (550 Park Avenue, New York City); envelope addressed to him from the [noted New York binder] James Macdonald Company found in volume. Altshul was a noted investment banker. His papers are housed at Columbia University. He was also involved in the founding of the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale. Altschul was the founder of The Overbrook Press, founded in 1934 in Stamford, Connecticut. Altschul initially pursued printing as a hobby, experimenting with a small press in his New York apartment. In 1934, he was approached by designer Margaret B. Evans, who had been working for Ashlar Press. Ashlar was closing, and Evans hoped Altschul would continue its work. Altschul set up the press in converted outbuildings on his Stamford farm and hired Evans as designer and compositor and John MacNamara as pressman. The Overbrook Press went on to print an eclectic variety of books and pamphlets, as well as ephemera such as awards and certificates. His most ambitious project was an edition of Prevost's Manon Lescaut, for which he created elaborate silk-screened illustrations. The volume, which was published in 1958 after six years of work, is considered one of the highest quality private press books of the time. This example of A Room of One’s Own was acquired at an auction containing Overbrook books, ephemera and effects pertaining to his granddaughter Katherine Graham.…