STONE, Irving

Agony and the Ecstacy, The

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963. Item #06679

“Good Friend to My Books” - Irving Stone to Leslie Bricusse
A Fine Inscribed Illustrated Edition of The Agony and the Ecstasy with Distinguished Association

Irving STONE. The Agony and the Ecstasy. A Novel of Michelangelo. Illustrated Edition. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1963.

First illustrated edition. Thick octavo (9 1/4 x 6 1/8 inches; 235 x 155 mm.). xvi, 720 pp. With nine inserted full-page color plates and fifty-two photogravure illustrations.

Publisher’s original quarter tan linen over color pictorial boards, spine blocked in black and lettered in gilt, pictorial endpapers. A fine copy in the original clear plastic dust jacket, housed in the original mottled green slipcase with brown label lettered in gilt on front panel - an unusually well-preserved example..

Presentation copy, warmly inscribed by Irving Stone to Leslie Bricusse:

“For Leslie Bricusse: / good friend to my books. / All my best, / Irving Stone / April 1973.”
Additionally signed by Bricusse on the front free endpaper.

A particularly appealing literary and musical association: Irving Stone - the great biographical novelist of artists and historical figures - inscribing his most celebrated work to one of the 20th century’s great lyricists.

Bricusse’s long-standing friendships across literary, theatrical, and cinematic circles are well documented, and this inscription suggests both personal regard and intellectual affinity.

Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961), his monumental fictionalized life of Michelangelo, remains one of the most enduring artist biographies of the modern era, later adapted into the well-known 1965 film starring Charlton Heston.
Copies of the illustrated edition in such fine condition - with the plastic jacket and slipcase intact - are uncommon; signed examples with meaningful association are decidedly scarce.

Price: $550.00