Wyndham (John) Re-Birth [The Chrysalids]

New York, Ballantine Books, 1955.

First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

The Ballantine Re-Birth actually precedes the Michael Joseph Chrysalids, making this less-lovely-titled US version the true first edition of the book many critics, and Wyndham’s own editor at New Worlds, who thought it far superior to Triffids, regard as his masterpiece. Post-nuclear Labrador; a fundamentalist farming society whose scripture commands “Watch Thou for the Mutant”; crops burned and deviant babies cast out; and young David Strorm, who recites the creeds while concealing that he and a handful of children can speak mind to mind. It is the least typical of the major novels and the most perfectly made. A set text in British and Canadian schools for generations, and with the odd distinction of a rock afterlife: Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Crown of Creation’ draws its lyrics directly from the novel’s dialogue.

The texts differ, the American edition trimmed of some of the philosophical passages, so the completist perhaps needs both…but the priority belongs here, and Ballantine’s mid-fifties hardcovers were tiny printings inside a paperback operation, making them far scarcer than their renown.