{"product_id":"spiegelman-art-the-complete-maus-a-survivors-tale-new-york-pantheon-books-1997-1996-signed-first-printing-of-the-first-one-volume-edition","title":"SPIEGELMAN, Art. The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997 [1996] — Signed First Printing of the First One-Volume Edition","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:720px; margin:0 auto; padding:28px 18px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; color:#111; line-height:1.58;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"margin-bottom:28px; padding-bottom:16px; border-bottom:1px solid #d8d0c3;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-size:24px; line-height:1.25; font-weight:normal; letter-spacing:.1px;\"\u003eSPIEGELMAN, Art (b. 1948)\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-size:18px; line-height:1.45; margin-top:4px; color:#333;\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.\u003c\/em\u003e New York: Pantheon Books, 1997 [issued 19 November 1996].\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1.8px; text-transform:uppercase; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:8px; color:#555;\"\u003eDetails\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px; margin-top:0;\"\u003eFirst edition, first printing of the first one-volume edition of the complete work, with a complete number line including 1. Signed by Art Spiegelman on the verso of the front free endpaper. Tall octavo, 296 pages. Illustrated throughout by Spiegelman. Publisher’s original black cloth-backed boards; original pictorial dust jacket retaining the publisher’s $35.00 price, with the red “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” medallion on the front panel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eThe edition distinction is important. This is not the first book appearance of either part of \u003cem\u003eMaus\u003c\/em\u003e: \u003cem\u003eMy Father Bleeds History\u003c\/em\u003e was published separately in 1986, followed by \u003cem\u003eAnd Here My Troubles Began\u003c\/em\u003e in 1991. It is the first printing in which Spiegelman’s complete narrative was issued as a single physical work, bringing the two volumes together within one continuously paginated book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMaus\u003c\/em\u003e emerged from the experimental culture of \u003cem\u003eRAW\u003c\/em\u003e, the influential avant-garde comics magazine founded by Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly in 1980. Chapters appeared there before publication in book form. What began as interviews recorded between Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, became a work at once documentary history, family memoir, survivor testimony, and an examination of the difficult process by which trauma passes from one generation to the next.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eThe narrative moves between Vladek’s experiences in occupied Poland and Auschwitz and Art’s later attempts to record them. Its central relationship is therefore not simply the pursuit encoded by Spiegelman’s cats and mice, but the strained and deeply human relationship between father and son. The work preserves Vladek’s survival story while refusing to disguise the arguments, evasions, guilt, affection, and failures of understanding through which that story reaches the reader.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eSpiegelman’s animal figures do more than assign visual identities: Jews appear as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs, yet the visible masks resist any suggestion that the Holocaust can be recovered transparently through realistic representation. Documentary fragments, family photographs, diagrams, temporal interruptions, and the conspicuous act of drawing expose both the history being narrated and the imperfect means of reconstructing it. Marianne Hirsch’s influential concept of “postmemory”—the relationship of the second generation to traumatic experiences inherited through stories, images, and family behaviour—was developed in direct engagement with \u003cem\u003eMaus\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eThe incompleteness of that reconstruction is part of the work’s documentary ethics. Most painfully, Anja Spiegelman’s diaries were destroyed by Vladek, leaving a maternal history that cannot be recovered. Text and image consequently do not offer seamless access to the past; instead, their gaps and disjunctions make visible the fragmentary character of testimony, memory, and the surviving archive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eThe Pulitzer board awarded \u003cem\u003eMaus\u003c\/em\u003e a Special Citation in 1992, confirming that a work in comics could sustain the documentary, autobiographical, and ethical ambitions traditionally claimed for literature. Contemporary reviewers recognized the scale of the achievement: \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e called it “the first masterpiece in comic book history,” while \u003cem\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/em\u003e described it as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust.” Its continuing presence in classrooms, bestseller lists, and censorship disputes demonstrates that \u003cem\u003eMaus\u003c\/em\u003e remains a living cultural text rather than a merely commemorated classic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eThe present copy joins the defining physical form of the complete work—its first one-volume printing, in the original priced dust jacket—with Spiegelman’s signature. It thus records the culmination of a publication history extending from the pages of \u003cem\u003eRAW\u003c\/em\u003e through the two separately issued volumes to the first edition in which the complete narrative could be encountered as one material and conceptual whole.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1.8px; text-transform:uppercase; margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:8px; color:#555;\"\u003eLiterature\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eArt Spiegelman, \u003cem\u003eMetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus\u003c\/em\u003e (Pantheon, 2011); Marianne Hirsch, “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory,” \u003cem\u003eDiscourse\u003c\/em\u003e 15, no. 2 (Winter 1992–93), pp. 3–29; Michael Rothberg, “‘We Were Talking Jewish’: Art Spiegelman’s Maus as ‘Holocaust’ Production,” \u003cem\u003eContemporary Literature\u003c\/em\u003e 35, no. 4 (1994), pp. 661–687; Thomas Doherty, “Art Spiegelman’s Maus: Graphic Art and the Holocaust,” \u003cem\u003eAmerican Literature\u003c\/em\u003e 68, no. 1 (1996), pp. 69–84; James E. Young, “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the Afterimages of History,” \u003cem\u003eCritical Inquiry\u003c\/em\u003e 24, no. 3 (1998), pp. 666–699; Hillary Chute, “‘The Shadow of a Past Time’: History and Graphic Representation in Maus,” \u003cem\u003eTwentieth Century Literature\u003c\/em\u003e 52, no. 2 (2006), pp. 199–230; Hillary Chute, \u003cem\u003eDisaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form\u003c\/em\u003e (2016); Álvaro Martín Sanz, “Representar el trauma. Posmemoria y ética de la representación en Maus de Art Spiegelman,” \u003cem\u003eAnclajes\u003c\/em\u003e 26, no. 2 (2022), pp. 67–83.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1.8px; text-transform:uppercase; margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:8px; color:#555;\"\u003eProvenance\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003ePrivate collection, United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1.8px; text-transform:uppercase; margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:8px; color:#555;\"\u003eCondition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px;\"\u003eFine. A bright, clean copy in the original dust jacket, retaining the publisher’s $35.00 price and red Pulitzer medallion. No condition issues, markings, annotations, repairs, restoration, or material trimming are known. The signature is clear and well placed on the verso of the front free endpaper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:17px; font-style:italic; margin-top:22px;\"\u003eA signed first printing of the first one-volume edition of \u003cem\u003eThe Complete Maus\u003c\/em\u003e: Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-recognized masterpiece, uniting survivor testimony, family memory, and graphic documentary form in the original priced dust jacket.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1.8px; text-transform:uppercase; margin-top:26px; margin-bottom:0; color:#555;\"\u003eAtelier Zweig · L403\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47166971510972,"sku":"L403","price":850.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/01_jacket_front.jpg?v=1784799240","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/spiegelman-art-the-complete-maus-a-survivors-tale-new-york-pantheon-books-1997-1996-signed-first-printing-of-the-first-one-volume-edition","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}