[Literature] Hamsun, Knut Hunger

London: Leonard Smithers and Co, 1899. First English edition (and first edition in English). 8vo. x, 312, 16 (ads) pp. Translated from the Norwegian by George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright). Original light grey pictorial cloth, stamped in black, boards spotted, faded, and unevenly toned, spine browned; all edges untrimmed; scattered spotting to prelims and text; ads unopened at rear; book-plate of Reverend Joseph Degen of Coalville, Leicestershire, on front paste-down.

First English edition, and the first edition in the English language, of Hamsun's early and influential modernist work. Originally published in the Danish magazine Ny Jord in 1888, and then in book form in 1890, by P.G. Petersen in Copenhagen. Translated for the first time into English by modernist pioneer and feminist George Egerton (1859-1945). Egerton moved to Norway in 1890 with her then husband, Henry Peter Higginson-Whyte-Melville. Upon his death that same year she met Hamsun, and their connection would inspire her 1893 short story, "Now Spring Has Come." In the same year she published her most well-remembered work of short stories, Keynotes, that was published by John Lane of the Bodley Head, and memorably illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.

Provenance

From the private collection of Asher D. Atchick, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania