Crash by J. G. Ballard

A unique uncorrected proof copy of Ballard’s infamous work about car-crash sexual fetishism. Coming from the library of Martin Bax, founding editor of the poetry and arts magazine Ambit (1959-2023), to which Ballard sometimes contributed, this copy contains numerous intriguing edits to the text in Ballard’s own hand. These changes do not appear in the published version, but rather seem as though the writer has gone back to his own work post-publication and revised various passages. A nice copy inscriptions aside, issued by Jonathan Cape in 1973, with a descriptive pastedown to the frontispiece that differs from the blurb found on the published version, as does the price, which went down from the £2.75 proposed here to £2.25 in the end. The published work also lost the exclamation point in the title.