Essays & Reflections 
 
Walter Benjamin. 
 
Jonathan Cape: 1970. First British edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Significant chipping along the top and bottom of the jacket, where there is soiling and fading as well. Scotch tape repairs on the joints of the jacket's panels and flaps as well as on the back panels. Minor bumping on the heel and crown of the spine as well as on the edges of the boards. Fading along the top of the boards. A little soiling on the fore edge of the text block. 280 pages. Jacket good, book very good.
 
The only British first out there of the collection that includes "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Selected and introduced by Hannah Arendt as the representative writing of the obscenely brilliant, bookish Benjamin, Illuminations is that rare best-of collection that's gone beyond a mere list of the hits and become a classic in itself. 
 
"I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am."