MOLLOY; MALONE DIES; THE UNNAMABLE

First reprint of the first hardback edition of what has become known as the Trilogy, with a newly designed dustwrapper showing a photographic portrait of Beckett on the front panel. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper. With the ownership name and date of James Booth, former Professor of English at the University of Hull and biographer, editor and former colleague of Philip Larkin in pencil to the front free endpaper, and a few of his lightly pencilled marginal annotations. A better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the contents, except for the aforementioned light annotations, clean throughout. Light vertical crease to spine (binding unaffected), and a few marks to the cloth. The dustwrapper, with some toning and light edgewear is otherwise in very good shape indeed. Not price-clipped (30s. to the front flap). A nice copy.

'Molloy', 'Malone Dies', and 'The Unnamable' first appeared together in English in 1959 as no. 71 in the Traveller's Companion (paperback) series published by The Olympia Press in Paris, an edition not licensed for sale in the UK or US. The three individual novels were published separately in the original French between 1951 and 1953, and in English (translated by the author, 'Molloy' in collaboration with Patrick Bowles) between 1955 and 1958 by Grove Press in New York. Only 'Malone Dies' was issued separately in the UK in 1958, prior to the 1959 (actually March, 1960) first combined edition. Ackerley and Gontarski note that "When John Calder asked (29 December 1957) to use 'Trilogy' on the dustwrapper, [Beckett] replied (6 January 1958): "Not 'Trilogy', I beseech you, just the three titles and nothing else."" Although Beckett had his way, Calder managed to smuggle the word onto the copyright page of the 1959 edition; it was removed for this 1966 edition. The freshly designed jacket of the reissue declares it to be "a new definitive edition" to mark the author's sixtieth birthday (Federman and Fletcher, however, do not record any textual changes or corrections). (C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, 'The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett' [London, 2006]; Federman and Fletcher 377.121)