The Lime Twig Signed First Edition Reference
The Lime Twig is John Hawkes’s most celebrated novel — a dreamlike thriller set in the seedy underworld of postwar London that combines the conventions of the crime novel with the techniques of literary surrealism. Published by New Directions in 1961, with an introduction by Albert J. Guérard, it follows Michael Banks and his wife Margaret as they are drawn into a conspiracy involving a stolen racehorse, gangsters, and a world of violence that seems to exist just beneath the surface of ordinary English life.
The Novel
The book reads like a Graham Greene thriller rewritten by Kafka. The plot elements are recognizable — a heist, a seduction, a violent reckoning — but Hawkes renders them in prose of such hallucinatory intensity that they become something entirely different from conventional genre fiction. The violence is abstract and poetic rather than realistic; the characters move through a London that is simultaneously specific and dreamlike; the narrative shifts perspective and chronology without warning.
Flannery O’Connor, in a rare endorsement of another writer’s work, praised The Lime Twig as “a book unlike any other.” Leslie Fiedler championed it as a breakthrough in American fiction. The novel established Hawkes’s reputation as the most important American experimental novelist of his generation — a reputation that his subsequent work would sustain but never quite surpass.
First Edition Identification
Publisher: New Directions, New York Publication date: 1961 Format: New Directions published in their characteristic format; the Guérard introduction is present in the first edition
Signed Copy Market Values
- Signed first edition, fine/fine: $300–$800
- Inscribed copies: $400–$1,200
- Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $75–$200
The New Directions first edition had a modest printing, and fine copies with intact dust jackets are not abundant. Signed copies carry the dual premium of literary significance and moderate scarcity. Hawkes’s long career at Brown means that signed copies exist in reasonable quantity, but demand from experimental fiction collectors keeps the market active.