Augustus.

WILLIAMS, John.

Item Number: 122759

New York: The Viking Press, 1972.

First edition of the author’s National Book Award-winning novel. Octavo, original half cloth, cartographic endpapers. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “For Bob and Margaret, good friends- with the gratitude of Augustus and John Williams.” The recipients were close friends of the author. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket.

In Augustus, his third great novel, John Williams took on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turned to the epistolary novel, a genre that was new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s Crossing and the campus novel in Stoner. Augustus is the final triumph of a writer who has come to be recognized around the world as an American master.