[NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH]. Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None. Published by T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1899.
FIRST BRITISH EDITION, SECOND ISSUE; cloth-bound, hardcover, octavo (24cm x 15.5cm x 4cm), pp. xxiii, [7], 488. English text. Bound in publisher's original dark blue cloth with gilt lettering and embossed publisher's device to the front cover and the spine, page edges untrimmed, coated endpapers, initial and terminal blanks, half-title. Condition: VERY GOOD. Contents complete. Binding tight and secure. Slight bumping to spine ends. Some very light foxing prelims. Without previous ownership markings. A handsome copy. Scarce.
Notes: First British edition, second issue of the English translation of Nietzsche's greatest and most influential work. The first English translation of Zarathustra was done by Alexander Tille and published simultaneously by Henry and Co. in London and Macmillan in New York in 1896. Henry and Co. was unfortunately a new and woefully underfinanced imprint that had been selected by C.G. Naumann and Nietzsche's cousin, Dr. Richard Oehler, over the protests of the English translators. Almost predictably, after publishing two titles (This book and The Case of Wagner) in 1896, the firm went bankrupt leaving two unpublished works (The Dawn of Day and The Genealogy of Morals) in the hands of the translators. The remainered Henry stock was bought (the company reported the sales of just 257 copies before June 30, 1897) by Fisher Unwin and rebound with their own title page and reissued in 1899. The text block here is identical to the Henry issue. Nietzsche's most radical and most famous book, Zarathustra is the one he considered his masterwork and his highest single achievement. Like Zarathustra, Nietzsche the philosopher goes down among men again in this prophetic masterwork, exhorting them to recognize and attend to what is best in them. "I teach you the Overman" says Zarathustra in his first speech to the people, "Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?"Zarathustra is more poetry than prose, more vision than reasoned insight, more didactic exhortation than playful intellectual fencing, more prophecy than psychological observation. The four books are an elaborate riddle seamlessly blending elements of Nietzsche's philosophy, his psyche, and his personal life into a seductive invitation to dance - and the vast literature they have generated is ample testimony to the complexity and the depth of the work. (Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon, p. 87).It is, moreover, the critical or destructive aspect of his philosophy that has made a significant mark on the mind of sophisticated man. He emphasized the important part in all spheres of human thought and activity played by self-deception, illusion and prejudice, and it is his stark insistence on the necessity to recognize and ruthlessly to uproot these sinister and treasured falsities that has made him appear unsympathetic to some. In this main aspect of his outlook and in its reception, similarities with Freud are plainly observable. "Thus Spake Zarathustra" glorifies the Uebermensch (superman). It is a long philosophical prose poem and the most widely known of his works. (Printing and the Mind of Man 370).
