ELEPHANT: And Other Stories.

First edition, first printing. Original grey cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper with lettering designed by Stephen Raw and a photographic portrait of Carver by Caroline Forbes to the rear panel. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm with just a little bumping at the spine tips, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents are clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper, showing the merest fading to the spine. Not price-clipped (£9.95 net to the lower front flap).

'Elephant and Other Stories' was published on August 4, 1988, two days after Carver's death at the age of 50 (the first edition jacket copy describes, for the last time, the author as living in Washington State and New York). The book, the last to be put together by Carver himself, was only published as a separate volume in the UK, its contents having appeared in the US three months earlier as the "new" component of 'Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories'. Hauntingly (and unusually for its author in being based on a historical figure), the final story in the collection, 'Errand', imagines the final days of Carver's beloved Chekhov, who died of tuberculosis aged 44.