The William Heinemann hardback of Achebe’s first novel, illustrated by Dennis Carabine. The imprint page reads “First published 1958 / Reprinted 1962”, which makes this the second hardback impression rather than the 1958 first — but a hardback in the original Heinemann setting, and a different book from the paperback the same house issued that year as number one in the African Writers Series.
The title page carries the four lines from Yeats’s The Second Coming that gave the novel its name. The jacket sets Okonkwo’s fall against the greater crash of the traditional African way of life, and reaches for Greek tragedy to explain the book to a British readership that had no other frame for it.
The author note was not reset for the reprint. It still describes Achebe as born “twenty-eight years ago” — true in 1958, not in 1962 — recounts his switch from medicine to English at Ibadan as recent news, and has him working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. The back matter carries Angus Wilson’s notice in The Observer, which closes by looking forward to a next novel.
Impression. This copy is the 1962 hardback reprint, not the 1958 first impression. It remains distinct from the African Writers Series no. 1 paperback of the same year, which the Library also holds: different binding, different setting, illustrated, and carrying the original 1958 jacket copy.
