Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Williams, William Carlos. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$200.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First edition. Hardcover. Tall octavo. 80pp. Limited edition #186 of 300 copies. Printed on watermarked hand-made paper by Rives. Plain paper over boards with green cloth spine, lacking spine label. Cover is darkened and foxed. Free end-papers are browned. Half-title, last blank and untrimmed edges are lightly foxed, but pages are nice.
Seller: Lost Horizon Bookstore, Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A.
Williams, William Carlos. The Great American Novel. Three Mountains Press 1923, 1923.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Description: 300 numbered copies, this one out of series. Two-tone green and tan cloth boards stamped in gilt on front cover and spine. Boards scuffed and soiled, wear to extremities, soft abrasion half-title page, a very good copy
Seller: Herland Books, Denver, CO, U.S.A.
WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. The Great American Novel. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$300.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Pale green cloth spine with paper covered boards. Spine and boards unprinted. Cloth lightly rubbed at head and heel, bumped at heel and with spine darkening in patches, corners bumped and worn, one corner professionaly repaired, small faint spot of damp to front, a couple of faint spots of soil, edges of boards browning slightly, and boards with a warp. This is an ex-libris copy with the follwing markings: very faint abrasion where sticker was removed front board, endpapers tanned with lighter patches where bookplate and pocket were removed (without abrasion), patch of very light abrasion and glue residue and faint note to rear pastedown. Size: 8vo
Seller: Contact Editions, ABAC, ILAB, Toronto, ON, Canada
Ezra Pound. Indiscretions; or, Une Revue de Deux Mondes. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$384.98 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: A thinly disguised autobiographical fragment concerned chiefly with Pound s father [Homer Pound]. It first appeared in the New Age, London, in 12 instalments from May to August 1920, and was reprinted in Pavannes and Divagations [Gallup A74]. Donald Gallup. This is the only publication dedicated to this piece of prose fiction by Pound; first edition thus. Printed by William Bird at the Three Mountains Press, 1923, and the first in a series of 6 whose other volumes were: II. Women & Men by Ford Madox Ford (1923); III. Elimus by B. C. Windeler with designs by Dorothy Shakespeare (1923); IV. The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams (1923); V. England by B. M. G.-Adams (1923); and VI. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (1924). I-IV were limited to 300 copies each, V to 150 copies and VI to 170 copies. Pound played the part of editor in putting together this series, but in 1936 he wrote: The little books were spaced too far apart to have the effect I meant. I mean Bill Bird took too long getting em out. Three Mountains Press soon went out of business and their press was bought by Nancy Cunard who founded The Hours Press, printers of A Draft of XXX Cantos and more. This copy is Gallup A23, first edition, numbered 121 of 300 copies. Boards somewhat worn and soiled with a minor presssure crack to the front board. Binding and leaves are solid. Spine slightly softened. Printed on watermarked Rives paper, some rippling, unfoxed and clean.
Seller: de Beaumont Rares, London, United Kingdom
Price: US$415.00 + shipping
Description: 1st. ed.Ltd. to 300 copies-Three Mountains Press- Contact Editions label tipped in over publishers name on the title page-paper label on spine partially rubbed off-green boards little soiled. v.g. Please email for info concerning any book or dust jacket. If d.j. does not appear in description, it means there is no dust jacket. Photos on request. Some books may have remainder marks. Heavy and/or oversized books require additional postage.
Seller: Frederick Bayoff Literary Books, Adrian, MI, U.S.A.
WILLIAMS, William Carlos. The Great American Novel. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$475.00 + shipping
Description: Tall 8vo, cloth-backed boards, printed spine label. One of 300 copies. Wallace A6a. Some offsetting to endpapers, spine label partially rubbed off, otherwise a fine copy. One of 300 copies. Wallace A6a. Some offsetting to endpapers, spine label partially rubbed off, otherwise a fine copy. First edition, one of a series of books edited by Ezra Pound.
Seller: James S. Jaffe Rare Books, LLC, ABAA, Deep River, CT, U.S.A.
WILLIAMS, William Carlos. The Great American Novel. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$1250.00 + shipping
Description: Tall 8vo, original cloth-backed boards, printed spine label. A fine copy. First edition, one of a series of books edited by Ezra Pound. One of 300 copies. Wallace A6a.
Seller: James S. Jaffe Rare Books, LLC, ABAA, Deep River, CT, U.S.A.
[Literature] Williams, William Carlos. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923.
Price: US$1375.00 + shipping
Description: Octavo.79, [1] pp. First edition; numbered 275 of 300 copies; signed by Williams on the front free endpaper. Bound as issued in publisher's cloth-backed boards; lacking title label. Binding is bumped at the board edges; spine ends softened with some fraying; boards toned; offsetting to the endpapers; a closed tear to the fore-edge of the front free endpaper has been discreetly mended; an additional short closed tear to the fore-edge margin of a leaf had an early tape repair that was removed and mended more sensitively. All in all, a reasonable copy of an uncommon book. A notable early work from one of the great American writers and issued like so many important literary works of that time from a small but significant American press in Paris. William Bird founded the Three Mountains Press in the 1920's and worked closely with Robert McAlmon's Contact Editions not long after opening. Bird was responsible for publishing and/or printing numerous major literary works of the era including several works by Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford's Women and Men, Robert McAlmon's Distinguished Air, William's The Great American Novel, and perhaps most notably, Hemingway's second and defining work, In Our Time. In fact, Pound edited the series of six short prose works that included this present novel and Hemingway's, In Our Time. Pound solicited Williams's work for this series about which he wrote in a letter to Williams that the "point of the thing [would] lie in its being really interesting." Williams's novel was that. While he later referred to it as a "satire on the novel form," his bibliographer contended that "it could be described as an attempt to explore," using Williams's own word, "the background of American life" (Wallace 16). An important work in its own right, The Great American Novel is also rooted in the culture of expatriate artists that Gertrude Stein named the Lost Generation. Bird's Press was integrally connected to the burgeoning Modernist movement in Paris which would define a generation of writers and influence generations that followed. An important work signed by one of the great writers of the 20th century. Wallace A6.
Seller: Michael Pyron, Bookseller, ABAA, Conshohocken, PA, U.S.A.