Books

Berlin: G. Fischer, 1924. First Edition. Two volumes; octavos (19cm.); publisher's gilt roan over gilt-stamped paper-covered boards, red spine labels; 578, 629,[3]pp.; text entirely in blackletter. Leather rather dried and margins rubbed, brief splitting at head of Vol. II rear joint, light soil and spotting to textblock margins, scattered foxing throughout, attractive contemporary ex libris of a Helmut Ellerholz to front pastedowns; a Very Good, sound and attractive set. Thomas Mann's "towering example of the bildungsroman" (Encyclopedia Britannica), first begun in earnest in 1915 as World War I waged through Europe, and only completed nearly a decade later, in November, 1924, the Great War finally at a safe enough remove.

A landmark of modern literature, The Magic Mountain unfolds in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe on the eve of World War I.