THE MAKING OF AMERICANS: Being a History of a Family's Progress

(Paris): (Contact Editions / Three Mountains Press), 1925. First printing. Very good plus.. First edition, in the rare original wrappers, of Stein's magnum opus, an influential Modernist epic. A metafictional account of the Hersland and Dehning families, Stein's AMERICANS was originally written (as the cover notes) in the first decade of the twentieth century. Told in Stein's characteristically repetitive style, the book was too radical for readers at the time, and wasn't published in any form until almost twenty years later when Ford Madox Ford brought portions out in TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW in 1924. The following year Robert McAlmon's legendary modernist press published this edition which, like most Contact productions, is notoriously fragile. Surviving copies are almost ubiquitously found rebound, and copies in the original wrappers, as here, are quite rare. A lovely copy of one of the founding texts of Modernism, which Stein herself rightly compared to Joyce's ULYSSES and Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. 9.5'' x 7.5''. Original orange printed wrappers. One of 400 copies (with another 100 copies reserved for the US market). [4], 926, [2] pages. First and last gatherings professionally resewn/repaired. Some toning to pages. Wrappers with some mild soil, edgwear.