A Leg to Stand On

London: Duckworth, 1984. First edition; Sacks' personal copy, with his notes on front endpapers and throughout. 168 pp. 8vo. Burgundy cloth, stamped in gilt on spine. Illustrated dust jacket, sunned on spine and top edges, annotated. First edition; Sacks' personal copy, with his notes on front endpapers and throughout. 168 pp. 8vo. Sacks' personal copy - so noted - with annotations to make corrections for the American edition: approx. 7 pages annotated throughout the text, and the front endpapers are covered with notes. All of the changes were incorporated into the American printing, except where he notes himself (re: chapters broken by quotation pages), and in the concluding section "VII. Understanding", which has become a separate, expanded, chapter with the same name as the book itself.

From the library of Jim Silberman, the publisher and editor at Summit Books, who published a few of Sacks' titles in America, most influentially The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which became a bestseller and made Sacks a household name. Sacks called Silberman "an important influence in my life [who] can spot the heart of the piece quicker than anyone else. He always gets a bullseye" (Web of Stories: Oliver Sacks, 2012). The Duckworth edition was published in May of 1984, preceding this edition by a few months, but Silberman had an important hand in the preparation of the manuscript, and it is the first book that Summit published by Sacks.

"Between 1977 and 1982, A Leg to Stand On was finally completed, some while swimming at Lake Jeff. Jim Silberman, my editor and publisher in America, was disconcerted when I sent him the Lake Jeff section of the book. He had not received a handwritten manuscript for thirty years, he said, and this one looked as if it had been dropped in the bath. He said it would have to be not just typed but deciphered, and he sent it to one of his former editors, Kate Edgar, now freelancing in San Francisco. My illegible, water-stained manuscript with its ragged, incomplete sentences, arrows, and indecisive crossings out came back beautifully typed and annotated with wise editorial comments. I wrote to Ms. Edgar saying that I thought she had done a remarkable job with a very difficult manuscript and that she should look me up if she returned to the East Coast.
Kate returned the following year, in 1983, and she has worked with me, as editor and collaborator, ever since" (On the Move: A Memoir, p. 240).