The Eye of Osiris: A Detective Story [Raymond Chandler's copy]

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1929. Second Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. Octavo, 344pp. First published in London in 1911, the first US edition followed a year later. This is the first printing of the second US (and first Dodd, Mead) edition. A crisp, clean copy, near fine, in the publisher's purple cloth, stamped in light green. Faint spotting to the rear board, and some very gnetle flecking to the spine titling. Age-toning to the edges. In a very good dust jacket, with a few medium tears and staining/rubbing to the rear panel, but rather vibrant overall. RAYMOND CHANDLER'S COPY, with his ownership stamp and a stamped date of Dec. 5, 1949 on the front free endpaper, noting his address on Camino de la Costa in La Jolla. The date (presumably when Chandler acquired the book), is just after the publication of "The Little Sister," just before the publication of his collectino of stories "The Simple Art of Murder," and a few years before "The Long Goodbye." Of "The Eye of Osiris," Barzun and Taylor write: "The earliest of all the tales that deal with the disappearance of a man [...] and his reappearance thoroughly transformed by one means or another to conceal his murder." A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone title, with the ownership marking of a writer who appears several times in the Haycraft-Queen list; desirable thus. See Hubin, p. 153 (noting just the first edition), and Barzun and Taylor, 1377 (under orig. title "The Vanishing Man").