8vo. Publisher's grey cloth, top edge stained blue (very slightly toned at spine ends); in unrestored original pictorial dust jacket designed by Stuyvesant van Veen (a few small chips and tears, tiny loss to front spine fold); quarter morocco folding case.

FIRST EDITION OF ROTH'S FIRST NOVEL. IN THE FIRST STATE JACKET with "Underlying the splendid surface..." on the front flap and without the blurb from the Minneapolis Star. Upon its publication, critics hailed the novel as a Modernist masterpiece. Despite earning critical acclaim, the book sold poorly and was out of print for nearly 30 years before a review by Irving Howe for The New York Times Book Review in October 1964 renewed interest in the work, describing it as a brilliant dream-like work.  In 1964, it was published in a paperback edition which sold over one million copies. Call It Sleep "evokes with relentless accuracy the gigantic fears, extreme attachments and dreadful misconceptions of childhood… [and]… has been described as one of the 'greatest achievements of American writing this century" (Parker & Kermode, 181). A BRIGHT COPY.