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Niffenegger, Audrey : The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel

Harry N. Abrams, New York City, NY, 2005

ISBN 0810959275

First Edition / First Printing. As New in No Dust Jacket, As Issued. 176 pages. The author's novel-in-pictures. Now considered a contemporary classic. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. A stunningly beautiful production by Audrey Niffenegger and Joseph Regal: Oversize-volume format. Pictorial hard boards with maroon leatherette overboards and white titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Art and text by Audrey Niffenegger. Round red sticker pasted on the cover. Printed on pristine-white, glossy stock paper to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Audrey Niffenegger's "The Three Incestuous Sisters". Her first illustrated novel. That is, a narrative told mainly in images accompanied by minimal text. Niffenegger is a brilliant and accomplished artist first, an imaginative writer second, but the wild success of her breakthrough debut novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife", has established her in the public mind as a writer. Based on an Artist Book that consisted of eighty handmade color etchings (it took her fourteen years to finish them) and self-published by Niffenegger in an edition of 10 copies (museums bought all of the copies), "The Three Incestuous Sisters" is an eerie yet shimmering tale. The spare text is presented opposite the delicately nuanced, full-page reproductions. They portray the Bronte-like lives of three inseparable, orphaned sisters: "Bettina, the youngest, is a lovely blond; Ophile, the eldest, has blue hair; Clothilde, in the middle, and in a world of her own, is a redhead. The svelte sisters possess extravagantly long hair and tapering, expressive hands; wear clinging, gray, ankle-length dresses; and are as powerfully evocative as the dancers of Martha Graham Dance Company. They live harmoniously in a lonely house by the sea until the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, Paris, appears and falls in love with Bettina, who soon becomes pregnant. Clothilde, whose esoteric talents include levitation, communes happily with her nephew while Ophile goes mad with jealousy" (Donna Seaman). Niffenegger's Grimm-ly evocative tale has been favorably compared to the work of Edward Gorey. Quite apart from the fact that hers is a frankly erotic, proto-feminist sensibility (whereas Gorey was a deeply closeted gay man who was a lifelong celibate), the iconographic patterns, unusual perspectives, tensile lines, and gossamer atmosphere suggest a hypnotic and ethereal otherworldliness that is Niffenegger's own. An absolute "must-have" title for Audrey Niffenegger collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Audrey Niffenegger. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine copy. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. 80 plates. One of the finest American artist/writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER AUDREY NIFFENEGGER TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0810959275.

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