Signed
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Family copy inscribed to daughter
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) by Walter M. Miller Jr., winner of the 1961 Hugo Award, is widely regarded as one of the great achievements of post-apocalyptic fiction. This UK Book Club edition, published by Reader's Union / Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 1961, is part of the publisher's "Contemporary Fiction" series.
Family copy inscribed. The copy is inscribed by Miller to his daughter Cathryn: "For my daughter Cathryn Augusta / with love / Walter M. Miller, Jr." Above the inscription, Miller has written a few lines in Latin which roughly translated seem to be wishing her a life of service to man, honor to the gods, and goodness in life. The book eventually reached the hands of Cathryn's daughter and Miller’s granddaughter, Margaret Isidro.
Along with the book is a delightful typed 107-word note from Miller to Margaret, written in December 1987. The note, printed on a 5.5" x 8.5" sheet of paper, includes a printed fractal image with the following caption: "The Womb of Mandelbrot's Dragon (screendump)." In the note to his granddaughter, the author playfully acknowledges their shared eccentricities, stating, “I'm a weirdo myself, so you watch out too.” He engages Margaret with talk of Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal work, whimsically describing a mythical "fiery reptile" in a "fractional dimension" discovered through his computer. The author expresses fascination with Mandelbrot’s fractal mountains and extends holiday well-wishes to Margaret with a nod to her involvement in ballet and baseball, signing as "Walt" at the end. The note offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the private life of Miller, who became increasingly reclusive in his later years.
Hardcover. First thus. Octavo, cloth binding with silver lettering on spine. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson / Reader's Union (British Book Club), 1961. Hugo Award winner (1961). Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (30). #11141.
Book has some discoloring to top and bottom edges and small stain on the page fore edges. Very good in very good dust jacket with wear and slight chipping at spine ends and folds.
Family copy inscribed. The copy is inscribed by Miller to his daughter Cathryn: "For my daughter Cathryn Augusta / with love / Walter M. Miller, Jr." Above the inscription, Miller has written a few lines in Latin which roughly translated seem to be wishing her a life of service to man, honor to the gods, and goodness in life. The book eventually reached the hands of Cathryn's daughter and Miller’s granddaughter, Margaret Isidro.
Along with the book is a delightful typed 107-word note from Miller to Margaret, written in December 1987. The note, printed on a 5.5" x 8.5" sheet of paper, includes a printed fractal image with the following caption: "The Womb of Mandelbrot's Dragon (screendump)." In the note to his granddaughter, the author playfully acknowledges their shared eccentricities, stating, “I'm a weirdo myself, so you watch out too.” He engages Margaret with talk of Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal work, whimsically describing a mythical "fiery reptile" in a "fractional dimension" discovered through his computer. The author expresses fascination with Mandelbrot’s fractal mountains and extends holiday well-wishes to Margaret with a nod to her involvement in ballet and baseball, signing as "Walt" at the end. The note offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the private life of Miller, who became increasingly reclusive in his later years.
Hardcover. First thus. Octavo, cloth binding with silver lettering on spine. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson / Reader's Union (British Book Club), 1961. Hugo Award winner (1961). Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (30). #11141.
Book has some discoloring to top and bottom edges and small stain on the page fore edges. Very good in very good dust jacket with wear and slight chipping at spine ends and folds.
Additional Details
A Canticle for Leibowitz unfolds across three linked novellas, each separated by roughly six centuries and set in the desert of what was once the American Southwest. The continuity running through all three is the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, a Catholic monastic community whose founding purpose is the preservation of whatever written knowledge survived the Flame Deluge, the nuclear war that brought the end of twentieth century civilization. The monks copy documents they do not fully understand, illuminate manuscripts whose technical content is beyond them, and maintain the abbey as a repository of pre-Deluge learning through an age that has turned its back on the knowledge that led to catastrophe.
The first section, "Fiat Homo," is set in a new Dark Age roughly six centuries after the war. Brother Francis Gerard of Utah is a novice on a Lenten fast in the desert when he discovers a fallout shelter containing documents that may have belonged to the Order's founder. Isaac Edward Leibowitz was a Jewish electrical engineer who converted to Catholicism, created the Order, and was martyred for it. The section establishes a world in which the word 'fallout' has become a liturgical term, blueprints are copied as sacred illuminations, and a grocery list from a past era is treated as a holy relic.
The second section, "Fiat Lux," is set during a period analogous to the Renaissance, when secular scholarship has re-emerged and is beginning to challenge ecclesiastical authority over knowledge. A scholar named Thon Taddeo arrives at the abbey to examine the preserved documents and is contemptuous of the monks who have kept them without understanding them. The debate between the abbot Dom Paulo and Thon Taddeo is the novel's most intellectually direct passage, and raises concerns about the possession of knowledge, and whether understanding and wisdom are the same thing. In the background, political tensions between city-states are escalating toward war.
The third section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," is set in a future that has rediscovered nuclear weapons and is using them. The abbey's abbot, Dom Zerchi, is managing a population of radiation casualties while fighting a legal battle with the state over euthanasia, and organizing a starship mission to carry the Order's knowledge off-world before the second Flame Deluge falls. The novel ends as it began, in the desert, in the aftermath of catastrophe, with the suggestion that the cycle will continue wherever humanity goes next.
Miller served as a radio operator and tail gunner during the Second World War and participated in the Allied bombing of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, one of the oldest monastic institutions in Europe. A Canticle for Leibowitz is understood to be in direct conversation with that experience. The novel grew from three stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1955 and 1957, which Miller expanded and revised into the novel published by Lippincott in 1960. In his later years he became increasingly reclusive, withdrawing from friends, colleagues, and his literary agent. He was at work on a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, when he took his own life in 1996, shortly after the death of his wife. The manuscript was completed by Terry Bisson and published the following year.
The first section, "Fiat Homo," is set in a new Dark Age roughly six centuries after the war. Brother Francis Gerard of Utah is a novice on a Lenten fast in the desert when he discovers a fallout shelter containing documents that may have belonged to the Order's founder. Isaac Edward Leibowitz was a Jewish electrical engineer who converted to Catholicism, created the Order, and was martyred for it. The section establishes a world in which the word 'fallout' has become a liturgical term, blueprints are copied as sacred illuminations, and a grocery list from a past era is treated as a holy relic.
The second section, "Fiat Lux," is set during a period analogous to the Renaissance, when secular scholarship has re-emerged and is beginning to challenge ecclesiastical authority over knowledge. A scholar named Thon Taddeo arrives at the abbey to examine the preserved documents and is contemptuous of the monks who have kept them without understanding them. The debate between the abbot Dom Paulo and Thon Taddeo is the novel's most intellectually direct passage, and raises concerns about the possession of knowledge, and whether understanding and wisdom are the same thing. In the background, political tensions between city-states are escalating toward war.
The third section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," is set in a future that has rediscovered nuclear weapons and is using them. The abbey's abbot, Dom Zerchi, is managing a population of radiation casualties while fighting a legal battle with the state over euthanasia, and organizing a starship mission to carry the Order's knowledge off-world before the second Flame Deluge falls. The novel ends as it began, in the desert, in the aftermath of catastrophe, with the suggestion that the cycle will continue wherever humanity goes next.
Miller served as a radio operator and tail gunner during the Second World War and participated in the Allied bombing of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, one of the oldest monastic institutions in Europe. A Canticle for Leibowitz is understood to be in direct conversation with that experience. The novel grew from three stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1955 and 1957, which Miller expanded and revised into the novel published by Lippincott in 1960. In his later years he became increasingly reclusive, withdrawing from friends, colleagues, and his literary agent. He was at work on a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, when he took his own life in 1996, shortly after the death of his wife. The manuscript was completed by Terry Bisson and published the following year.
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