TRACY CHEVALIER (b.1962)
Girl with a Pearl Earring. London: HarperCollins, 1999.
A simply magical first edition, extra-illustrated with a printed gallery of artworks by Vermeer and his contemporaries, signed on the title page and profusely annotated throughout by the author. Girl with a Pearl Earring, the author’s second novel, imagines the life of a young maid sent to work for Vermeer and the subsequent creation of the artist’s most famous painting. It was adapted into a film in 2003, starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. Opposite the front pastedown, upon which Chevalier has pasted an image of the title painting, she writes: ‘In my research notebook for this novel, I pasted a copy of Vermeer’s painting to the inside cover so that I could peek at it when I worked […] I was horrified by how small the painting was on this cover […] So I thought I’d better provide a bigger picture for this copy, tucked away like a secret’. Tipped in to the margins throughout the novel are 25 folding plates featuring printed illustrations of artworks and other material from the author’s research, all accompanied by notes in the margins or on the plates themselves. In each case, they are placed beside the moment in the narrative to which they correspond, to create a visual guide to the text. Other annotations describe the author’s personal circumstances during the novel’s composition, and one expands the printed dedication to her father, to whom she attributes some of her love of paintings.

Octavo. (Linseed oil stain to p.183 deliberately placed by the author with reference to the narrative). Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, first state pictorial dust jacket with the misspelling ‘Earing’.

Buyer’s premium is payable, with a significant portion donated by Christie’s to English PEN, but note that no VAT is payable on hammer price or buyer’s premium.
-