BURROUGHS, William (1914-1997). The Naked Lunch. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1959.

A bright copy of the first edition, first printing, with green border on title page and 1500 francs on rear cover. Burroughs was a primary figure in the Beat Generation and the author of numerous novels, novellas, short stories, and essays, of which The Naked Lunch is his best-known. The Olympia Press, founded in Paris in 1953 by Maurice Girodias, published avant-garde and erotic fiction. It was the first publisher willing to take on The Naked Lunch, which soon became famous. It was also the publisher behind Nabokov's Lolita.

Octavo (175 x 110mm). (Minor smudge to endpaper.) Publishers green printed wrappers. Pictorial dust jacket printed in purple, black and yellow; glassine (dust jacket with small chip to head of spine and a couple short closed tears to rear panel; glassine with a little chipping at edges).

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