EINSTEIN, Albert “Relativity: The Special and the General Theory” [Henry Holt, 1921] 3rd Printing

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1921. “3rd Large Printing.” Octavo. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt on the front board. Portrait frontispiece of Einstein. Original publisher’s dust jacket printed in black on tan paper. Cloth exceptionally clean and bright for this title, the gilt lettering sharp; minor wear at extremities. Dust jacket with a moderate chip at the crown of the spine extending slightly into the upper panel, smaller chips and short closed tears along edges, and general toning consistent with age. Near Fine in Very Good minus jacket.

Einstein’s celebrated non-technical exposition of his revolutionary theory, written to explain the principles of relativity to an educated general audience. First published in German in 1916 and translated into English by Robert W. Lawson in 1920, the work quickly became the most widely read introduction to modern physics in the early twentieth century and played a major role in disseminating Einstein’s ideas beyond the scientific community.

Copies of the early Holt printings rarely survive in their original jackets, which were printed on thin paper and typically discarded or heavily worn through use. The present example, a 1921 “3rd Large Printing,” represents an unusually early survival in dust jacket. At the time of cataloguing, only one earlier jacketed printing appears to be offered on the market, making this among the earliest obtainable examples of Einstein’s landmark work in its original publisher’s jacket. The survival of the jacket, combined with the remarkably clean cloth, makes this a particularly desirable example of one of the foundational popular works of twentieth-century science.