Night and Day
Virginia Woolf, 1919
WOOLF, Virginia (1882-1941). Night and Day. London: Duckworth, 1919.

Fine copy of the first edition of Woolf’s second published novel, in the very rare dust jacket. RBH/ABPC record just one other example in the dust jacket since 1975. Night and Day is perhaps the most traditional novel that Woolf ever wrote. “The reason for this was that Virginia Woolf, while writing her first novel, The Voyage Out (1915), had become conscious of a dissatisfaction with the traditional form of the novel. Feeling that she was insufficiently experienced as yet to begin experimenting, she set herself the task of mastering the conventions before she went on to surpass them in later novels such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941)” (Raitt). This copy with the misprints uncorrected on pp.199, 236, 269, 400 and 483. Kirkpatrick A4a; Raitt, Suzanne. “Introduction”, in Night and Day. Oxford: OUP, 1999.

Octavo. Publisher's dark gray cloth lettered in blue; dust jacket (light toning and light wear at fold ends, unrestored); custom orange chemise and quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance: bookseller's ticket of Gotham Book Mart, New York; Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. (1910-2001, American bibliophile and director of the Pierpont Morgan Library; bookplate, his sale Sotheby’s, London, 6 November 2001, lot 85).