(#110060) THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER AND OTHER FABLES. Seumas O'Brien.

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER AND OTHER FABLES. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1916. Octavo, pp. [1-10] 1-302 [303: publisher's colophon] [304: blank] [305: ad] [306: blank] [note: first leaf is a blank], inserted frontispiece with illustration by Robert McCaig, original green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First edition. Loosely connected stories consisting largely of philosophical banter between two old friends. Told with some of the true Irish wit, with a smooth tongue and a sharp tooth, massaging you one minute and dunking you in a cold lake the next, what with their hypnotic ritualized conventions of speech one minute and casual flashes of brilliant rhetoric the next, flattery and flummox, silk and steel, though not up to the standard of James Stephens or Seumas MacManus or Flann O'Brien, to name a few. Some of the stories use supernatural motifs typical of their setting. "Twenty whimsical and fantastic stories … The author puts a good deal of homely and commonsense philosophy into their mouths. Indeed they talk rather above their roles." - Brown, Ireland in Fiction 1267. Bleiler (1948), p. 212. Reginald 10902. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 O-14. A fine copy in very good decorated dust jacket with shallow chipping at spine ends and corner tips. (#110060).

Price: $150.00

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Printing identification statement for this book:
"Published, November, 1916" on copyright page.