The Tale of Genji Series; The Tale of Genji; The Sacred Tree; A Wreath of Cloud; Blue Trousers; The Lady of the Boat; The Bridge of Dreams

London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1933. First Edition. Very good. First in English, in the original cloth of varying shades of green and dark blue. Generally, very good with wear, rubbing and fading to the bindings of each volume. Old library stamp to the lower margin of the volume 1 title page, some offsetting to endpapers of volume 2, foxing to page edges and early/late leave of volume 3, small library stamps to the pastedowns of volume 5, small ink ownership signature to the front endpaper of volume 6, else all are internally clean. Unparalleled in literary history, The Tale of Genji stands as the first extant novel authored by a woman, and is (truncated) among the viable candidates for the first novel. Murasaki Shikibu's work emerged within the relatively isolated cultural sphere of Heian Japan, where literacy was confined primarily to the aristocratic elite. Initially circulating in manuscript form among court circles, the novel reached a limited sphere. Murasaki's eleventh-century masterwork represents a pioneering achievement in prose fiction whose significance lies more in its retrospective recognition than in any immediate literary impact. Sophisticated psychological portraiture, complex narrative architecture, and nuanced examination of court politics emerged from a gendered subject position traditionally excluded from formal literary production. Her unprecedented accomplishment—creating a sustained narrative of extraordinary length that explores interiority, temporality, and social relations—gained appreciation centuries later not only in academia but also among modernist literary figures when Arthur Waley's translation appeared in the 1920s. As both author and historical subject, Murasaki embodies the complex negotiation between gender constraints and intellectual authority, having produced a text that would remain unsurpassed in its narrative complexity for centuries.

The story reveals a narrative of remarkable structural sophistication operating across multiple hermeneutic dimensions. The text articulates a complex meditation on mono no aware (the pathos of things) through its depiction of Genji's romantic pursuits and political machinations. Murasaki employs recursive narrative patterns and cyclical character relationships that function as literary embodiments of Buddhist conceptions of karma and impermanence. The work's intricate exploration of court aesthetics—particularly through detailed descriptions of poetry, calligraphy, music, and material culture—constitutes not merely ornamental features but essential vehicles for character development and thematic exposition. Contemporary scholarship has identified the text's deployment of multilayered female subjectivities as a radical narrative innovation, especially through its representation of women's interior experiences within patriarchal social structures. The novel's complex temporal architecture, which spans multiple generations while resisting linear progression, prefigures narrative techniques not widely adopted in Western literature until the modernist period, thus positioning Murasaki's work as an overlooked antecedent to contemporary narrative experimentation. (Inventory #: 1131)