The Making of Americans. Being a History of a Family's Progress. Written by Gertrude Stein 1906-1908

Paris: Contact Editions / Three Mountains Press, (1925). First Edition. First printing (regular issue); 500 copies on japan (per Wilson). Quarto (24cm x 20cm). Contemporary full burgundy morocco, with gilt spine-titles; floral endpapers; (3),925,(3)pp. External rubbing and wear; front joint rather tender, with partial splits and what appear to be old, amateur attempts at repair; internally clean, tight and complete. Very Good. One of perhaps 400 copies thus, as 100 copies from the edition were reserved for sale in the U.S. under the imprint of A&C Boni. There was a simultaneous deluxe issue of 5 copies on large paper.

A presentable but (truncated) somewhat fragile copy of Stein's early meta-fictional masterpiece. An earlier bookseller has pencilled the words "publisher's binding" on the front free endpaper. However, as Wilson notes there was no publisher's binding in leather – an unspecified number of leather-bound copies were indeed advertised by the publisher, but these were then bound to order, out-of-house. Wilson estimates that about thirty copies were so bound. Whether this is one of those copies, or a copy bound later, is a matter of speculation. We have noted a publisher's prospectus specifying copies to be available in "half-leather" (which this is not) – but also setting the limitation at 300, not 500, copies, leaving us sufficiently in doubt that we prefer to make no assertion one way or the other. WILSON A6a. (Inventory #: 24647)