The Hamlet.

FAULKNER, William.

Item Number: 145449

New York: Random House, 1940.

First edition, stated first printing of the first novel in Faulkner’s acclaimed Snopes Trilogy. Octavo, original cloth. Fine in a good first issue dust jacket with ads for ten other Random House titles on the rear panel. Very minor toning to the front and rear pastedown with rubbing, some loss, and closed tears to the spine and extremities of the dust jacket. Jacket art by George Salter.

The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.