BRADBURY, Ray (1920–2012). Dark Carnival. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1947.
8vo. Original black cloth, gilt–lettered spine (attempted erasure of a previous ownership signature on front free endpaper); original unclipped dust jacket (some very light edgewear). Provenance: Richard Manney (book label), one of the most famous book collectors of the 20th century who was known for the best examples on the market. A selection of his library was sold at Sotheby’s in 1991, amassing a total of over $3.9m which was the first multimillion–dollar library assembled in the 1980s to come up for auction.
FIRST EDITION, one of 3,000 copies printed, of Bradbury’s first book. “His best work, from the beginning, has been his fantasy… and his best fantasy has been his horror stories. As previously mentioned, the best of the early Bradbury was collected in [this work]. No easily obtainable edition of this work, the Dubliners of American fantasy fiction, is available… Included are such short Bradbury classics of gut–chilling horror as ‘The Jar’, ‘The Crowd’, and the unforgettable ‘Small Assassin’” (Stephen King in Danse Macabre). Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction 254; Currey, p. 55; Jaffery 27.