Bibliographic Description
86.03.W018: Brodkey – First Love and Other Sorrows
FIRST LOVE | AND OTHER | SORROWS | HAROLD | BRODKEY | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | VINTAGE BOOKS • A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE • NEW YORK
First Vintage Books Edition, March 1986
112 leaves, pp. 3–12 13-31 32–34 35-84 85–86 87-114 115–116 117-156 157–158 159-166 167–168 169-177 178–180 181-192 193–194 195-207 208–210 211-223 [3] [The first page with pagination marked on it is page 13; however, the table of contents indicates that the first story, “State of Grace”, begins on page 11. The page numbers listed on the table of contents point to the section title for each story, pages that are unnumbered with a blank unnumbered page on the verso before the story proper begins. Thus, we should expect 10 pages / 5 leaves to precede this page 11, when there are in fact only 8 pages / 4 leaves. There are 2 pages missing from the expected 10 at some point in the sequence; to preserve an unbroken pagination sequence, I have treated pages “1” and “2” as missing]
Contents: 3 blurbs and author photo, 4 blank, 5 title, 6 imprint, 7 dedication, 8 blank, 9 contents, 10 blank, 11-223 First Love and Other Sorrows: 11-31 “THE STATE | OF GRACE”, 32 blank, 33-84 “FIRST LOVE | AND OTHER | SORROWS”, 85-114 “THE QUARREL”, 115-156 “SENTIMENTAL | EDUCATION”, 157-166 “LAURIE DRESSING”, 167-177 “LAURA”, 178 blank, 179-192 “TRIO FOR THREE | GENTLE VOICES”, 193-207 “PIPING DOWN | THE VALLEYS WILD”, 208 blank, 209-223 “THE DARK | WOMAN OF | THE SONNETS”; χ1b about the author, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries order form, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list.
Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Rick Lovell; interior author photo by Jerry Bauer.
Copyright: © 1954, 1955, 1957. ISBN: 0-394-72970-6. Price: $5.95. First Love and Other Sorrows was first published by Dial Press, 1954.
Copies: JDP 1.2
Blurbs
- (front cover) For some years now, Harold Brodkey has been making one of the great brave journeys of American literature. – Don DeLillo
- Since 1958, when this book of stories was first published, Harold Brodkey has been at work on a long novel known as Party of Animals. In 1985, in Vanity Fair, the critic Denis Donoghue wrote, “The published fragments of his otherwise incomplete novel have convinced me that it’s a work of genius.” As The New Republic recently commented, “It is fair to say that for many years now Brodkey’s considerable presence on the literary landscape has been the product of his considerable absence….But his literature matters a great deal, for literature it certainly is. / For those who have read excerpts from Brodkey’s work-in-progress in The New Yorker and Esquire, and for those who are new to his fiction, the reissue of First Love and Other Sorrows (long out of print) makes available “an unusually gifted writer with an attractive freshness of perception, a fine command of language, and an individual vein of humor,” as The Atlantic’s review stated over twenty-five years ago. Here, then, is the world of the educated upper middle class, at leisure and in love.
- A volume marked with quiet immediacy. Some of the stories, indeed, almost have the effect of murmured confidences, highly personal yet carefully contrived. – The Chicago Tribune
- A clever, eager, perceptive series of sketches underlining the various manners of youthful American love….Brodkey writes with an engaging sympathy which one has no wish at all to resist. – The New Statesman