The Metamorphosis

First edition in English. Small 8vo. Pp. [vi], 74. Quarter-bound blue linen cloth over charcoal-grey paper boards, with printed pale blue label to upper board and spine stamped in black. In publisher's glassine dustwrapper with price (3/6 net.) printed in blue on front flap.

Spine faintly rubbed at head and tail, endpapers sparsely spotted, contemporary bookshop ticket to rear pastedown. In the rare glassine dustwrapper, sustaining some loss along the spine, but otherwise intact.

Translated by A. L. Lloyd. Originally published as Die Verwandlung in the avant-garde journal Die weißen Blätter, by Der weißen Bücher, Leipzig, in October 1915 and in book format by Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig, in December of the same year (though dated 1916). Adamant that any illustration not depict a bug, Kafka stated in a letter to Wolff dated 25 October 1915: "The insect itself must not be illustrated by a drawing. It cannot be shown at all, not even from a distance".

Written in a flurry of feverish activity between November 17 and December 7, 1912 during which Kafka also completed Das Urteil and the first chapter of Der Verschollene (Der Heizer).

Partly autobiographical in its depiction of Kafka's uneasy relationship with his father and widely considered a cornerstone in the development of twentieth century consciousness, Die Verwandlung tells the bizarre tale of Gregor Samsa, an overworked travelling salesman who awakens from troubled sleep to find himself transformed into "some monstrous kind of vermin".