Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Stein, Gertrude.. The Making of Americans.. NY. Harcourt, Brace, and Company. 1934., 1934.
Price: US$350.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition. With "first edition" on the copyright page. This is the first abridged edition according to Wilson. A bookplate with: "Presentation Copy for Geraldine Gordon with the Compliments of Harcourt, Brace and Company" has been affixed to the front endpaper. NF/VG in reddish-pink woven cloth stamped brightly in red. Dustjacket is worn and torn (with two 2" closed tears at top of front panel); and priced at $3.00. With light rubbing to the top and bottom of the spine and light edge-wear. Scarce in jacket. First Edition. With "first edition" on the copyright page. This is the first abridged edition according to Wilson.
Seller: Brainerd Phillipson Rare Books, Holliston, MA, U.S.A.
Stein, Gertrude. The Making Of Americans: The Hersland Family. Harcourt Brace and Company, 1934.
Price: US$1300.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First American edition. Terra cotta cloth in dust jacket. Signed and inscribed by Gertrude Stein on the half-title. Spine slightly slanted, light soiling to cloth, offsetting to end papers, else very good in a very good dust jacket with minor chipping and sunning to spine. Rarely found signed.
Seller: Book 'Em, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
Price: US$1938.26 + shipping
Description: First edition thus, first printing, signed by the author on the half-title. This work was first published in book form in Paris in 1925 and in the US in 1926. The present edition is edited and shortened by Stein's close friend Bernard Faÿ (1893-1978), who contributes the preface. Excerpts of the novel first appeared in 1924 in the Transatlantic Review, after Ernest Hemingway convinced the editor, Ford Madox Ford, to accept Stein's work. The following year, the entire novel was published by Contact Press in Paris, in a limited edition of 500 copies, of which 100 were exported for an American edition published by Albert and Charles Boni in 1926. It wasn't until 1966 that the full novel appeared again, published by Something Else Press. Bernard Faÿ and Stein were lifelong friends; Faÿ has been reported as saying that the three most important people that he had met were Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and Andre Gide (Kingsbury). Faÿ was the primary translator of Stein's works into French, and despite his anti-Semitism, he protected her and Alice B. Toklas during the Nazi occupation of France; Stein wrote a letter on Faÿ's behalf when he was tried as a Nazi collaborator, and later contributed financially to his escape from prison. Loosely inserted into this copy is a 20-page New Yorker article, "Someone Says Yes To It, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and The Making of Americans", by Janet Malcolm, 5 June 2005. In the article, she praises the vision of the book, while lamenting its length: "It is more a monument than a text, a heroic achievement of writing, a near-impossible feat of reading". Edward M. Kingsbury, "Gertrude Stein Articulates at Last", The New York Times, 3 September 1933. Octavo. Original pale brown cloth, spine and front cover lettered in reddish-brown, top edge red. Housed in a custom red cloth chemise and quarter morocco slipcase. Light soiling to top edge of front cover, a few trivial marks to foot of spine and edges, lower edges of boards a touch rubbed. A near-fine copy in jacket, tiny chips to spine ends and corners, two short closed tears to head of rear panel and front panel, rear panel a touch soiled, light rubbing and creasing to extremities, very bright indeed.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom