The Abyss.

YOURCENAR, Marguerite.

$125.00

Item Number: 126394

London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976.

First English edition of the author’s evocative Prix Femina award-winning novel. Octavo, original cloth. Translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with chipping to the crown of the spine. Jacket design by James Campus. Jacket illustration by Eric Fraser. Small name to the front free endpaper.

Marguerite Yourcenar's novel of sixteenth century Europe is, like Memoirs of Hadrian, essentially a meditation on the nature and condition of man. The principal character, Zeno, typical of the leading intellectuals of his day in the wide range of his studies and activities, is botanist and physician, alchemist, engineer, metallurgist and philosopher. In The Abyss, Yourcenar weaves a magnificent tapestry of northern Renaissance Europe: a throng of minor characters - merchants, bankers, churchmen, artisans, women of every sort and condition - people the narrative. First published in France in 1968, the novel was met with immediate popular interest as well as critical acclaim, obtaining the Prix Femina with unanimous votes the year of its publication.