The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, First Edition (23 results)

third printing, 1970. the book which, per the "new york times," "cut a new path through the american literary landscape by placing black girls at the center of the story." morrison's debut novel is set in her hometown of lorain, ohio. taking place in 1941, it centers on pecola breedlove, a young african-american girl who is marked as "ugly" due to her dark skin and awkward mannerisms. this persistent social rejection leads her to develop an inferiority complex and a desperate desire for blue eyes, symbolizing her yearning for the beauty and status she associates with "whiteness." narrated primarily from the perspective of claudia macteer, pecola's foster sister, the novel also incorporates third-person omniscient narration. morrison explores difficult and controversial themes, including racism, incest, and child molestation, which have led to the book being frequently challenged and banned in schools and libraries. new york: holt, rhinehart and winston. isbn: 0-03-085074-6. hardcover. book condition: fine. jacket condition: fine.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. The Bluest Eye Author: Toni Morrison Publication: Knopf, New York, New York Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: A Fine copy in a Fine mylar wrapped dustjacket Description: THIS IS FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING BOOK IS FROM PULITZER AND NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR TONI MORRISON! First edition, first printing in Fine condition in a mylar wrapped dustjacket in Fine condition (see photos). 215pp. Store Description Welcome to Allen's Rare Books. Each book in our inventory has been personally inspected, exhaustively described, and photographed to meet the standards of the discerning collector. We encourage prospective customers to contact us with any questions. Terms of Sale We accept all major credit cards via the AbeBooks Shopping Cart. Customers have 30 days to return a purchased volume(s) which do not meet their original description or are otherwise unsatisfactory. We are proud to offer free shipping on all standard (octavo) sized volumes. Shipping Shipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 lbs. or 1 KG. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know if extra shipping is required. Each order is packed with the utmost care to ensure safe arrival.

Cloth. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. The first UK edition of Morrison's first novel. Bottom corners bumped with associated creasing to the jacket at these corners. Still near fine. Not price-clipped; no other markings.

Hardcover. Condition: Very good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. First Edition. First Edition, First Printing (stated) in dust jacket. Very good+ in very good dust jacket. From the library of author and activist Dorothy Sterling with her neatly written name on front endpaper. Otherwise clean and unmarked. Bound on a bit of a slant with rear cover slightly longer than front cover, but not afffecting binding strength. Jacket front flap creased, unclipped ($5.95). Variant with 1070 on front flap.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. First edition, Signed by Toni Morrison on title page. Signed by Author(s).

Cloth. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. 1st UK Edition 1979. The Bluest Eye is by the American author and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's. This first novel is a powerful work about racism and privilege in the United States. Book is near fine and very bright. Contents good. The wrapper is near fine and very bright. More images can be taken upon request. Ref 18934.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. First UK Edition. VG+ Blue cloth boards and gilt to spine. Light edge wear to boards and spine tail. Relaxed binding at head. Front corners bumped, rear corners gently bumped. Light pencil notations to front pastedown. Otherwise clean and unmarked. Very mild edgewear/presumed finger impression to fore edge of pages 9-25 or so. A few tiny spots to last endpaper/rear pastedown. Clipped DJ, VG+, with mild foxing to edges. Chatto sticker to front flap. Covered in mylar. Please ask to see images for your satisfaction. Shelf 10b.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. 8vo, blue clothbound quarter hardback with publisher's original paper boards. With unclipped Dust Jacket. pp 164 Dust Jacket in Very Good condition, save for minor enclosed tears towards lower front board and some loss towards top, above title. Small stain along top spine. Small enclosed tear on reverse side of Dust Jacket, towards the top. Faint discolouration running across block of text on front Dust Jacket. Toned and browned. Minor signs of fading and rubbing along spine of clothbound hardback, also in Very Good condition. This is a First edition, first printing. Allegedly only 1200-1500 copies were printed. In her powerful debut novel, Morrison looks at the intersection of racism, self-hatred, poverty, and sexuality with realism and her beautifully descriptive writing style. In some ways this is a unique design for the Dust Jacket as it includes the first three opening paragraphs from the first chapter of the book. If one looks closely enough there are little blue dots over each and every "i" which therefore adds a double meaning to the title "The Bluest eye".

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Toni Morrison (1970) 'The Bluest Eye', US first edition, first printing, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Signed and inscribed by the author with "Best wishes" by on the title page. Provenance: obtained from a private collection who had this copy signed at the YMHA in New York City in the late 70's. Condition: a fine book in a near fine dust jacket which in not price clipped showing one closed tear which has been repaired at the rear as shown. The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's debut novel. Printed of about 2,000 copies most specimen ended up in libraries. The haunting and deeply moving story of feeling shame and guilt for simply being born with a black skin in a white-dominated American society has attained the highest literary status and contributed to Morrison's Nobel Prize. The book is on the syllabus of many English/ American Literature courses. First and Fine. Signed by Author(s).

First British edition. Jacket design by Kate Cary. First British edition. The first British edition of Morrison's landmark first novel, published nine years after its initial American publication, featuring a stunning unclipped dust jacket. One of the scarcest books of the 1970s regardless of genre, the book's frank discussions of sensitive topics such as racism, incest, religion, and child molestation has provoked continuous attempts to remove it from schools and public libraries across the United States, landing it as the American Library Association's 10th most banned book from 20102019. Ignoring the controversy, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company developed it as a stage play in the early 2000s, premiering it in February 2005, and it had a limited Off-Broadway run in New York the following year. Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, becoming the first African-American woman to do so. Blue cloth, stamped in gilt on spine; two-color illustrated dust jacket, unclipped; fine.

Softcover. First Edition; First Printing. Near Fine in wraps. ; Signed by Toni Morrison on title page. ; Signed by Author.

Cloth. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: fine. Signed first English edition of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, in fine condition. (illustrator). First English Edition, First Impression. Octavo, 164pp. Blue cloth, title in gilt on spine. No additional printings listed on copyright page. Solid text block, a fine example. In the publisher's exceptional dust jacket, £4.95 retail price on front flap. Signed by the author in black ink on the title page. A beautiful, scarce example of the author's first published book. The true first edition of the Bluest Eye was published in the United States in 1970 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was an influential American novelist, essayist, editor, and professor, celebrated for her profound exploration of the African American experience. With a career spanning several decades, Morrison authored acclaimed works such as "Beloved," "Sula," and "Song of Solomon," earning her numerous prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Beyond her literary achievements, Morrison was a trailblazer for African American writers, using her powerful voice to advocate for social justice and illuminate the complexities of race, gender, and identity in American society.

8vo. First UK edition. Original blue hardcovers, gilt. Jacket design by Kate Cary. Tiny abrasion to the publisher's name at the foot of the d/w spine. Fine in near fine, unclipped d/w. The author's first novel. First published in the USA in 1970. A lovely copy.

First edition of Morrison's classic first book. Octavo, original half cloth. Boldly signed by Toni Morrison on the title page. Near fine in a very good first issue dust jacket with the $5.95 price and 1070 on the bottom of front flap, with some expert restoration. Dust jacket design by Herb Lubalin and Jay Tribich. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell slipcase. Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear: You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye. "Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is an inquiry into the reasons why beauty gets wasted in this country. The beauty in this case is black. [Miss Morrison's prose is] so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.I have said 'poetry,' but The Bluest Eye is also history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music" (John Leonard, The New York Times).

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Unclipped dust jacket, moderate edge-toning, no ruffling, chipping or tears, in mylar cover. Tight binding solid boards with tiny bump to bottom front and sharp corners, slightly faded spine strip with bright silver lettering, light foxing to edges, otherwise clean, unmarked pages throughout. Photos available on request. Stated 1st edition. From the library of Wilfrid Sheed, essayist, novelist and literary critic, whose collection we purchased. Announcement from Random House (postmarked 12/23, 1985) for Dinesen's Out of Africa movie tie-in addressed to Mr. Sheed at his Sag Harbor residence, that he presumably used as a book mark, laid in.

First UK edition, 8vo., pp.(iii),164, blue hardcover, gilt; slight marking/foxing to fore-edges, lower corner of rear board lightly bruised, an otherwise fresh and near-fine copy, in very good unclipped pictorial dust-jacket, which has light creasing to laminate coating where price label has been removed.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. The Bluest Eye is the great American author and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's first novel, a powerful work about racism and privilege in the United States. That there have been and continue to be numerous attempts to ban it from American schools is testament to its accuracy. This is the rare first UK edition, published by Chatto and Windus in 1979. In Fine condition.

First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "To Paul Bartel, Regards, Toni Morrison". Bartel (1938-2000) was an actor and director, best known for his black comedy Eating Raoul (1982). Morrison wrote the novel, her debut, "in stolen moments between her day job as a book editor and her life as the single mother of two young sons" (Fox). It received little critical attention on publication, though the distinguished critic John Leonard was unstinting in his praise, describing Morrison's prose as "so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry" (Leonard). It has since been widely praised for "cut[ting] a new path through the American literary landscape by placing black girls at the center of the story" (Als). Its lasting importance was recognized in 1993, when Morrison's received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hilton Als, "Toni Morrison's Profound and Unrelenting Vision", New Yorker, 27 January 2020; Margalit Fox, "Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88", New York Times, 6 August 2019; John Leonard, "Three First Novels on Race", New York Times, 13 November 1970. Octavo. Original blue quarter cloth, spine lettered in silver, grey paper-covered sides. With dust jacket. Book label of William A. Strutz (1934-2024) to front pastedown. Spine ends lightly sunned; jacket unclipped, lightly toned as usual, vertical creases to flaps as often: a near-fine copy in near-fine jacket.

First edition, first printing, of the author's influential first novel, which "cut a new path through the American literary landscape by placing black girls at the center of the story" (Als). Its lasting importance was recognized in 1993 when Morrison received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Morrison wrote the novel "in stolen moments between her day job as a book editor and her life as the single mother of two young sons" (Fox). It received little critical attention on publication, though the distinguished critic John Leonard was unstinting in his praise, describing Morrison's prose as "so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry" (Leonard). Hilton Als, "Toni Morrison's Profound and Unrelenting Vision", New Yorker, 27 January 2020; Margalit Fox, "Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88", New York Times, 6 August 2019; John Leonard, "Three First Novels on Race", New York Times, 13 November 1970. Octavo. Original blue quarter cloth, spine lettered in silver, grey paper-covered sides. With dust jacket. Spine ends lightly bumped and sunned, occasional ink underlinings to contents; jacket unclipped, slightly toned and with a faint vertical crease to front flap, as usual: a very good copy in near-fine dust jacket.

Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. First edition stated, first printing. Signed by Toni Morrison and inscribed to a former owner on the front free endpaper. Bound in publisher's original paper boards over blue cloth spine lettered in silver. Near Fine with light toning to contents. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket, lightly toned and with some faint streaks of browning as typically seen with this dust jacket, and a small strip of offsetting to the blindside at the spine. A much nicer copy than normally encountered of the author's scarce first novel.

Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First British Edition. First British edition, first printing. Bound in publisher's blue cloth-affect paper-covered boards with titles printed in gilt on the spine. Near Fine with slight lean to the binding, light wear to spine ends, former owner name to front free endpaper and pages lightly tanned. In a Near Fine price-clipped dust jacket with light toning and light edge wear, foxing to the flaps and blindside.