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J. M. Dent & Sons / E. P. Dutton, Published 1964. Hardcover, xxi, 309 pp.; 19 cm; Everyman's Library No. 597, "First included in Everyman's Library 1964"; double-page map of the Laxdale district. Translated by Muriel Press; edited with an introduction and index by Peter Foote.
In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Black cloth-covered boards, copper lettering and Everyman's Library monogram on spine; mild shelf and edge wear, light bumping to top corners of both covers. Binding tight. Orange Everyman's Library patterned endpapers. Bookseller's ticket of Snaebjorn Jonsson & Co., The English Bookshop, Reykjavik, on front pastedown. Mild foxing to edges of text block; mild toning and foxing to first and last few leaves, including endpapers; mild overall toning. Some creasing and a few small closed tears to top edge of last few leaves. Otherwise unmarked. Yellow illustrated dust jacket with wrapper drawing of a helmeted Viking warrior by Eric Fraser; a few nicks and small tears (1/2 inch or less) along edges, mild to moderate shelf and edge wear with some soiling and scuffing, heavier to rear panel; faded spine, mild overall toning and foxing. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Laxdaela saga, written in the west of Iceland about 1250, is a family chronicle that follows the descendants of Ketill Flatnose from 9th-century Norway to the death of Snorri in 1031. At its center is the tragedy of Gudrun Osvifsdottir, Kjartan and his foster-brother Bolli, in which Gudrun urges her husband to kill the man she loves. Muriel Press's translation, first published in 1899, was the first English translation of the saga. This Everyman's Library edition includes an introduction by Peter Foote, Professor of Old Icelandic at University College London, on the saga's sources, its debt to the Sigurd and Brynhild legend, and the translation, with a note on a verse and a full index. The text is in 78 chapters, each dated where the saga allows. Jacket artist Eric Fraser (1902-1983), known for his Radio Times drawings and later Folio Society Tolkien illustrations, drew many of the Everyman's Library jackets of the 1960s.