USELESS HANDS ... Authorized Translation from the French by Elisabeth Abbott. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, [1926]. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii-viii [1-2] 3-300 [301-312: blank] [note: last six leaves are blanks], original decorated black cloth, front and spine panels stamped in light blue, top edge stained blue, fore-edge untrimmed, bottom edge rough trimmed, light green endpapers. First edition in English. Translation of LES CONDAMNES A MORT (1920). A fine novel of a nightmare world of the future involving automation and the working class; when the workers go on strike they are eliminated with a death ray. "Told on an almost surrealistic level; cerebral, but imaginative; far superior to the similar METROPOLIS by Thea von Harbou." - Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 701. Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 2-26; (1987) 2-30; (1995) 2-35; and (2004) II-395. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 291. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 81. Bleiler (1978), p. 71. Reginald 05228. Previous owner's blind stamp on front free endpaper. Some fading to edges of endpapers, lower front corner shows a little wear, a near fine copy in very good wraparound pictorial dust jacket with chipping to spine ends and some loss along folds. An attractive copy. Not common in the jacket. (#127591).
Price: $450.00
No statement of printing.