A Wizard of Earthsea, with a custom bookplate laid in, signed by Le Guin.
Berkeley, CA: Parnassus Press, 1968. Ruth Robbins. First trade edition, second issue. Hardcover. This is a jacketed first edition, second issue of the author’s foundational Earthsea novel, accompanied by a custom bookplate signed by Le Guin, laid in.
Per Currey, there were both trade and library issues of the first edition. This is the trade issue, distinguished as second issue by lack of a vertical smudge on the title page, un-embossed black print and decoration on the binding spine and front cover, and “11 up” not accompanied by a price on the upper front flap of the dust jacket.
The laid in, illustrated, unaffixed bookplate is signed by Le Guin "Ursula K. LeGuin”. For years, Le Guin would provide signed bookplates to fans who wrote to her and provided a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Varying designs are known. Intriguingly, in this case the petitioner apparently provided his own bookplate for Le Guin to sign. The plate features an illustrated border and is printed in four lines above Le Guin's signature "This book has been inscribed | by the author | for the library of | Mark A Winter". This book came to us from Oregon, where Le Guin lived for nearly six decades.
Condition of the book approaches very good plus in a very good dust jacket. The sea-evoking blue-green cloth binding is square, tight, clean, and unfaded. We note only minor shelf wear - wrinkled spine ends, a touch of fraying to the bottom corners, and a tiny bruise to the upper front corner. The contents are likewise clean and bright, with no previous ownership marks and no discernible age-toning, the seafoam green endpapers intact. A hint of light, barely discernible spotting appears confined to the otherwise clean and bright text block edges. The dust jacket is moderately soiled, scuffed along the spine and flap folds, and showing minor loss to the spine ends, wrinkling to a depth of .625 inches at the spine head, and a tiny hole at the upper rear flap fold. The jacket is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover. The signed custom bookplate is crisp, clean, complete, and unaffixed.
This first edition is visually striking, stylistically in keeping with the tonal qualities of myth and legend characterizing Le Guin’s text. The title page, map, and chapter headings are all decorated with “fine, woodcut-like art” by Ruth Robbins. Robbins is also responsible for the dust jacket, illustrated on both the front and rear face, including what Le Guin later called its “splendidly stylized, copper-brown portrait face” of her protagonist. This portrait is repeated in black on the front cover of the blue-green cloth binding, which is also lettered in black on the front cover and spine.
Le Guin attributes the origins of her Earthsea world to two stories she wrote and published in 1964 – “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names”. Earthsea manifested fully in 1968, when the editor of Parnassus Press asked Le Guin if she would write “a fantasy novel for younger readers.” She began with the map – which eventually became the one that precedes the text in this, her first novel to inhabit and define Earthsea.
What Le Guin wrote is, in keeping with the subversive nature of both the author and the fantasy and speculative fiction genres in which she wrote, is hardly just a children’s tale. On the surface, it is a coming-of-age story centering on the trials of a talented young wizard. The psychological and moral dimensions render the story a bildungsroman, and the defining antagonist darkness is too complex and integral, the ouroboros resolution too self-aware, for this story, and its world, to fail to appeal far beyond a youthful audience. It continues – and will continue – to resonate
References: L. W. Currey, Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Selected Nonfiction – Revised Edition; Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea, The Complete Illustrated Edition. Item #008931
Price: $1,150.00