John Calder 1993. 8vo in publishers hardcover with gilt title and well preserved dustjacket. XX, 241 pp. 8vo in publishers hardcover with gilt title and dustjacket. XX, 241 pp. Minor wear to jacket, light foxing to edges, else very good clean copy

First edition, 1st printing, with introduction by John Calder and Eoin O’Brien

Samuel Beckett’s first novel. Written in English over the summer in Hotel Trianon in Paris in 1932 when Beckett was only 26 and living in Paris, the clearly autobiographical novel was rejected by publishers and shelved by the author

The novel was eventually published three years after the author’s death. The title parodies Tennyson’s “A Dream of Fair Women” and the term “fair to middling,” applied to agricultural products. Three fragments from the book were published during Beckett’s lifetime: “Text” and “Sedendo et Quiescendo” were actually published before he started working on the book and subsequently became part of it, whilst “Jem Higgins’ Love-Letter to the Alba” was published in 1965. Beckett refused to allow the entire novel to be published during his lifetime, on the grounds that it was “immature and unworthy”: his biographer Deirdre Bair believes that his reluctance to make it available to the reading public was to avoid offending lifelong friends whom Beckett satirised in the book. The novel is set in the town of Kassel, Germany, where 17-year-old Peggy Sinclair, a cousin of Beckett, lived with her parents. Beckett made several visits in Kassel 1928–32. The main character Belacqua, a writer and teacher, is very similar to Beckett himself, though a character named “Mr. Beckett” also makes an appearance in the book. Belacqua’s name is taken from the character created by Dante. Influences on the novel include Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women, Alfred Tennyson’s “A Dream of Fair Women” and Henry Williamson’s The Dream of Fair Women