Airships by Barry Hannah - 1985

New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1985. First Vintage Books Edition, November 1985. Perfect-bound octavo in illustrated glossy wraps. 209pp. About Near Fine. Cover by Rick Lovell. Signed copy of Hannah's debut short story collection, which was first published to resounding critical acclaim and would stake out his particular style of Southern fiction. Anecdotally, this bookseller has been told bya few obsessives that the saxophone-taking-off-from-aircraft-carrier depicted on this edition's cover is a "high point" of the Vintage Contemporaries design of the 80s/90s -- a corner of the graphic design book world we are scared to look too close at, but is certainly a singular one.