The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs first UK edition 1964

8vo., original camel-coloured publisher’s boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, with publisher’s device to foot; together in the original unclipped dust jacket (42s.), featuring a photograph of the author with red eyes to the upper panel; pp. [v], 2-251, [i]; a crisp fine copy; the dust jacket with a gentle crease to the bottom edge of the jacket, otherwise fine also; The panels are clean and white with no marks. A wonderful copy.   
 
First UK edition, originally published in Paris by the Olympia Press in 1959. 
 
The Naked Lunch can reasonably be described as Burrough’s best-known work. The drug-and-sex-fuelled narrative, written in a series of vignettes, was designed to be read in any order, and became incredibly popular during the beatnik period of the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, it was subjected to a series of obscenity trials, most famously in Boston, when both Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer testified in its defence. 
 
In his introduction, Burroughs writes: "The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED lunch - a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."
 
A highly collectible almost fine example of the UK edition, with the jacket arguably more arresting than its American counterpart.