Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Bernard Malamud. The Magic Barrel. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1958.
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Signed by Malamud on front free endpage without inscription. Later printing (1967). Near fine book in very good dust jacket. Clean and bright copy with lightly edge and corner-worn dust jacket.
Seller: Open Boat Booksellers, Amherst, MA, U.S.A.
Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel (SIGNED). Farrar Straus Cudahy, New York, 1958.
Price: US$195.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: SIGNED by author on title page. No stated edition on copyright page. Unsure of this printing due to lack of statement (1st Printings have that statement on cp page). $3.75 price present on DJ flap. Raspberry colored boards w/purple lettering; blue-green top-stain; 214 pages. DJ design by Milton Glaser; five blurbs on rear of DJ. DJ has National Book Award decal on front. DJ rubbed and faded with wear on rear along spine and top; sunning of spine. mylar protected. Book is collection of 13 stories and won the National Book Award in 1959. Scarce signed in any edition. (Bonus: Comes with a very good unsigned 1st Printing hardcover copy of Malamud's novel "Rembrandt's Hat"). Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall
Seller: Daniel Montemarano, Newfield, NJ, U.S.A.
MALAMUD, Bernard. The Magic Barrel. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, New York, 1958.
Price: US$350.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: First edition. Spine a little soiled, corners a little bumped, else near fine lacking the dustwrapper. Inscribed by Malamud to Chet Garrison (a close friend and colleague of Malamud's) and his wife Louise: "For Louise and Chet - good friends - Every good wish. Bern. Corvallis. May, 1958." The Garrisons were also the dedicatees of a 1967 omnibus edition of Malamud's work, *The Malamud Reader* Chester A. Garrison became friends with Malamud soon after Garrison joined the English Department at Oregon State College (now University) in 1954 where they bonded over being Easterners (Malamud from New York and Garrison from Jersey City) and their mutual interest in Thomas Hardy. Malamud's son Paul interviewed Garrison about their relationship for the book *The Magic Worlds of Bernard Malamud* (2001). A very nice association copy.
Seller: Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA, Gloucester City, NJ, U.S.A.
Malamud, Bernard.. The Magic Barrel.. New York Farrar Straus & Cuday, 1958.
Price: US$665.41 + shipping
Description: X, 213 pp. Original half cloth with dust jacket. First Edition. Signed by author. - Few browned. Gewicht (Gramm): 434
Seller: Müller & Gräff e.K., Stuttgart, Germany
Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel. The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1958.
Price: US$900.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. (Preceded the Farrar, Straus & Cudahy trade edition by a few days.) Signed by author on title page in black ink. 214 pp. Original cloth-backed boards, decorated in purple and yellowish orange. Near Fine with very light wear to tips and name written on front free endpaper. In Very Good unclipped dust jacket with sunned spine panel, a few clear tape mends on verso, tiny pinhole in front panel, lightly worn at head. The author's first collection of stories, winner of a National Book Award.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel.. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1958.
Price: US$975.00 + shipping
Description: First edition of Malamud's first collection of short stories, which went on to win the National Book Award. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "For Marshall and Min Everything good- Bernie." Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Milton Glaser. Housed in a custom clamshell box. The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggling New York Jewish Painter Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic. "In the short story, Malamud achieved an almost psalmlike compression. He has been called the Jewish Hawthorne, but he might just as well be thought a Jewish Chopin, a prose composer of preludes and noctures" (Mark Shechner, Partisan Review).
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.