The Secret History
Viking, 1992.
Rare UK uncorrected advanced proof copy. 8vo. Publisher's original paper wrappers, reproducing Clarence White's 'Faun and Girl'. A very good copy indeed, a couple of light creases to the covers.
Rare advance proof copy of Tartt's debut novel, now a cult classic.
The proof opens with a publisher's blurb that is not reproduced outside of the proof, giving a synopsis of the novel and its publication information. Some of these details, including the price, were changed between the printing of the proof and the book's publication.
A comparison between the setting of the proof and of the first edition reveals that changes were made to the text. This includes Tartt's epigraphs. In the first edition (and all subsequent printings) the epigraphs that open the book are passages from Friedrich Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations, and Plato's Republic. In the proof, however, the Nietzscheian epigraph is absent, with a passage from Charles Cochrane's Christianity And Classical Culture in its place:
"The emperor himself was representative and exemplar of the Roman order, the Augustan order. In this capacity there was imposed upon him as perhaps his chief duty the obligation of conformity to a type struck in the mint of the founder; and from this type the slightest deviation was abhorrent. Accordingly, the last thing either expected or desired of a Roman emperor was that he should be himself. We need hardly comment on the immense psychological strain which this most [sic] have imposed upon various princes; nor is it astonishing to find that many of them looked, more or less covertly, for ways of escape."
Stock ID: 43030
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