INSIDE A PEARL: MY YEARS IN PARIS

New York City, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 260 pages. Book-length account on subject. One of Edmund White's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now scarce. "Autographed Copy" oval sticker pasted in front. Presents Edmund White's "Inside A Pearl: My Years In Paris". Yet another book on the most-written-about, most tourist-infested, and most photographed city in the world? Why absolutely, yes. This is the author's third book on Paris, preceded by "Our Paris: Sketches From Memory" (1995) and "The Flaneur: A Stroll Through The Paradoxes of Paris" (2001) . For White, as for so many other Americans before him (Hemingway on the one hand, Sontag on the other) , and having finally moved back to (dreary) United States, the allure of Paris remains inescapable and inexhaustible. She is an iridescence, revealing herself from so many illuminating angles. "When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, leaving New York City in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he was forty-three years old, couldn't speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. White fell headily in love with the city and its culture: Both intoxicated and intellectually stimulated, he became the definitive biographer of Jean Genet; wrote lives of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud; and became a recipient of the French Order of Arts and Letters. A brilliant examination of a city eternally imbued with the aura of enchantment" (Publisher's blurb) . An absolute "must-have" title for Edmund White collectors. This Autographed Copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Edmund White. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: There are indeed many copies available online. Nearly ALL of them are subsequent printings because the First Edition was small and sold out shortly after publication. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994 for "Genet". Anointed by Vladimir Nabokov as his American successor. One of the finest American writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER EDMUND WHITE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1608195821.