Wise Blood.

O'CONNOR, Flannery.

Item Number: 143982

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952.

First edition of O’Connor’s powerful first novel. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

Assembled from disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review and Partisan Review, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood, has come to be appreciated as a work of "low comedy and high seriousness". Themes of redemption, racism, sexism, and isolation are prevalent throughout the novel which O'Connor stated was about "freedom, free will, life and death, and the inevitability of belief."