The Farm

New York: Crown Publishers, 1967. First Edition. Hardcover octavo, gray cloth with orange stamped titling to boards, 248 pp. Near Fine, gentle push to bottom corners, light soiling to outer text block, else clean and sound./Very Good jacket, unclipped, some toning, general light rubbing, soiling, foxing, edgewear including a few small closed tears.. Jacket by Tom O'Sullivan. First Edition of Cooper's underground classic of prison life in a Lexington Federal Narcotics penitentiary ("The Farm"). Cooper, who had briefly enjoyed literary success with his autobiographical debut "The Scene", soon found his work languishing in pulp markets as he struggled with a heroin habit, publishing a few more novels under Harlan Ellison's editorship to little fanfare before completing this last novel while again serving time for narcotics. In a posthumous appraisal in The Guardian, Tony O'Neill writes, "After the critical success of The Scene, and the humiliation of his later works being relegated to pulp outfit Regency House, the incarcerated 32-year-old played every card he had. In The Farm, Cooper's language is flowing and experimental: he creates words, plays with syntax, and everything moves in an irresistible rhythm." This last gambit proved unsuccessful, and Cooper died anonymous and penniless twelve years later in a New York City YMCA. It has only been through the eventual Norton paperback reprint that the book was brought to a new audience and subsequent appreciation. Likely due to the book's (lack of) reception, first editions are quite scarce.