The Maus Set — Art Spiegelman

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale & Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon Books · New York · 1986–1991
First Editions · First Printings
Curated Two-Volume Publication-Event Set

The Set:
A curated pairing of the true first edition, first printing of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986) and the first edition, first printing of Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (1991). The first volume retains its original French wrappers and $8.95 rear-cover price; Maus II retains its original dust jacket. Together, the two volumes preserve Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust narrative in the original book-form editions through which the complete work first entered the world.

Included Titles:

• Maus: A Survivor’s Tale — Art Spiegelman
  Pantheon Books · New York · 1986
  First Edition · First Printing
  Original French wrappers · $8.95 rear-cover price

• Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began — Art Spiegelman
  Pantheon Books · New York · 1991
  First Edition · First Printing
  Original hardcover binding · Original dust jacket

Condition:
Very Good to Near Fine overall. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale grades Very Good, retaining its original French wrappers. Maus II grades Near Fine in a Near Fine original dust jacket. Both volumes retain their original publisher-issued formats with no evidence of rebinding or replacement components observed.

Story Of The Set

Art Spiegelman used the visual language of comics to tell a story many believed the medium was incapable of carrying.

Maus reconstructs the Holocaust through Spiegelman’s conversations with his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. But the work is not simply Vladek’s testimony. Spiegelman also records the difficult process of receiving that testimony: the gaps in memory, inherited trauma, family conflict, and the burden placed on a son trying to transform another person’s survival into history.

The story first developed serially in RAW, but Pantheon’s 1986 Maus: A Survivor’s Tale transformed it into a book that reached a far larger audience. Five years later, Maus II completed the narrative.

Its impact extended far beyond comics. In 1992, the completed Maus received a special Pulitzer Prize, an extraordinary recognition for a work that had challenged assumptions about what comics could accomplish as literature, history, memoir, and witness.

The form once associated with disposable entertainment had become a vessel for one of history’s most difficult acts of remembrance.

Why It’s In The Collection

The Maus Set belongs in Consigned to Darkness because witness does not end with the person who experienced an atrocity. It also depends on whether someone preserves the testimony—and whether another generation is willing to receive it.

Spiegelman transformed his father’s memories into something deliberately difficult to categorize: biography, autobiography, oral history, graphic literature, and Holocaust testimony exist simultaneously on the page. The result preserves not only what happened to Vladek, but what happened when his son tried to understand it.

That makes these particular editions important. Later boxed sets and collected editions preserve the text, but this pairing preserves the original book-form publication events: the 1986 volume through which Maus first reached readers as a book and the 1991 volume that completed the work.

Together, they document both an act of historical witness and a transformation in the possibilities of printed storytelling.

Vladek Spiegelman survived the history. Art Spiegelman, his son, made sure his testimony survived him.

Collection Categories: Graphic Literature · Holocaust & Genocide · Witness Literature · Memoir & Testimony · Publication-Event Object · Literature · Anti-Authoritarianism · Multi-Volume Set

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Authentication Evidence

• Maus: A Survivor’s Tale copyright page ends “Manufactured in U.S.A. // First Edition,” the diagnostic formulation identifying the first edition and distinguishing it from later printings that retain the original copyright date.

• Maus: A Survivor’s Tale retains its original French-flap wrappers.

• The original $8.95 U.S. price remains present on the rear wrapper.

• The wrapper is the early publication design and lacks the later “Volume I: My Father Bleeds History” designation.

• Taken together, the copyright-page formulation, original wrapper configuration, and pricing support identification of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale as the 1986 First Edition · First Printing.

• Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began copyright page explicitly states “First Edition.”

• Maus II retains the complete first-printing number line ending in 1, directly establishing first-printing status.

• Maus II is the stand-alone hardcover first edition, rather than the contemporaneous paperback issue or a volume supplied as part of a later pairing or boxed set.

• Original publisher’s hardcover binding remains present on Maus II.

• Original unclipped dust jacket remains present on Maus II.

• First-printing jackets are documented with the original $18.00 U.S.A. / $23.50 Canada price; the jacket price on this copy should be stated as a physical authentication point only where directly confirmed.

• Maus II collates to 135 pages, consistent with documented copies of the 1991 first edition.

• Pantheon imprints, typography, bindings, and publication details are consistent with the respective original editions.

• No evidence of book-club manufacture, facsimile components, remainder marks, rebinding, or replacement wrappers is observed.

• Observable and independently corroborated bibliographic evidence supports identification of both volumes as First Edition · First Printing copies.

• The two volumes are curatorially paired; no claim is made that these copies were originally issued or marketed together as a publisher-issued set.