The Tales of Jacob. Joseph and His Brethren: I.

First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 375, [1, note]. Textured, limp beige cloth, titled in brown to spine and front. Illustrated dustwrapper, priced 7s. 6d. to front flap. Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Originally published as Die Geschichten Jaakobs by S. Fischer, Berlin, in October 1933.

Boards unmarked with minimal edgewear; foxing to fore-edges. Pictorial jacket (now in archival cover), unclipped but worn and tanned to spine, with a two-inch tear at tail of spine, causing partial loss to publisher's imprint, and shorter tears and nicks at corner edges and spine panel.

Scarce in d/w.

Considered by both Mann and many scholars to be his greatest work, this is vol. 1 of his Joseph and His Brethren tetralogy, written over a 16 year period and retelling the stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph (chapters 27–50). In its English version it was followed by The Young Joseph (1935), Joseph in Egypt (1938) – published in 2 vols. – and Joseph the Provider (1945). Recipient of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature.