The Chinese Novel (signed)

The Chinese Novel:  Nobel Lecture Delivered before the Swedish Academy at Stockholm, December 12, 1938. Near fine in original black cloth, titled in gilt, and very good dust jacket, price clipped. Near fine black and gold jacket showing only light peripheral wear. Signed by Pearl S. Buck on front free endpaper. With black & white photographic portrait frontispiece. With black & white photographic portrait frontispiece. One of Buck's scarcest. The Chinese Novel is Buck's Nobel Prize Lecture delivered at the Swedish Academy upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Buck, the first of just two American women to win the prize, points out the distinct nature of the Chinese novel, the quintessential grass-roots form which comes from and lives within the Chinese common people whose tea house and farming villages are the roots of the stories contained therein. She also predicted--correctly--that her own adherence to this form would cause her to fall out of the critical limelight, in time. Octavo. 5.75 x 8.75 in. [ii], 59, [1] pp. A wonderful collector's copy.