Ford, Ford Madox; Schorer, Mark [introduction]; Baldwin, James [owner]

THE GOOD SOLDIER [James Baldwin's copy]

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. First Borzai Edition. Octavo, 256 pages. In Good condition, lacking the publisher's dust jacket. Bound in publisher's full black cloth, faded lettering to spine. Some general wear and rubbing, including bumping to corners, chipping to head and tail of spine, sun-fading to spine. With James Baldwin's ownership ink on the front free endpaper: "James Baldwin / N.Y. / '52". No marginalia present. Shelved in Show Case.

1409657

Shelved Dupont Bookstore

Price: $20,000

NOTES

Ford Madox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is considered one of the great works of the 20th century. James Baldwin's 'Giovanni's Room' was considered a controversial queer novel upon publication and is now considered a key work in the canon of gay literature.

Colm Tóibín, in his essay 'Baldwin's complex fate' for Prospect Magazine in April 2016, writes: "Baldwin’s book [Giovanni's Room] is also close to Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier in the slow and tortuous going over of events in the past in order to come to some understanding of sexual treachery. This is not to suggest that Baldwin was influenced by these other texts, or that he even read them, but rather that the confession form itself, in a time when so much about sex and sexual motive was kept dark and hidden, can have a special and searing intensity. It is especially open to a heightened tone, the tone of self-awareness and self-knowledge being forced on to the page as though after a struggle, the tone of things being said for the very first time."

This copy of 'The Good Soldier' answers the question of whether Baldwin read Ford in the process of writing 'Giovanni's Room', published in 1956. With the date of 1952, Baldwin probably picked it up on his only visit to the United States that year. After finishing 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' in February of 1952, he sent it off to New York. "Within months, the publisher Alfred A. Knopf expressed interest, and Baldwin returned to New York—the first time in three-and-a-half years—to meet the publisher and visit his family." [NYPL: James Baldwin Papers].

This copy would benefit from further scholarly research, as its place in the creation of Giovanni's Room is largely unexplored. The relationship between two of the great novels of the 20th century, especially when read through a queer lens as Baldwin would have done, also is worth exploring in depth.