Die Verwandlung. [The Metamorphosis].

Small 8vo. Pp. 74, [3]. Charcoal grey yap wraps with blue title label framed and printed in black. List of Wolff Verlag Kafka titles to rear, followed by publications issued in the series, Der jüngste Tag. Trimmed page edges. Second edition, printed on cheaper paper by Dietsch & Brückner, Weimar. Uncertain publication date but probably 1918, on account of Kafka titles to rear.

Fragile item with upper wrapper and initial blank page (bearing publisher's seal) together detached from copy, backstrip largely disintigrated, hinges cracked at places, covers sustaining closed tears and some loss to edges, especially to the upper corner of front panel, else textblock holds well together with bright and clean type throughout. Complete with publisher's rare red paper bookmark, listing Kafka's publications amongst list of titles appearing in the series.

Originally published in the October 1915 issue of the avant-garde journal Die Weißen Blätter, it subsequently appeared in book form in December 1915 (though dated 1916) by Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig. 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 kind of "ungeheueres Ungeziefer" [monstrous vermin].

[Dietz 47; Unseld 30]