EXTREMELY RARE - JUNKIE by WILLIAM BURROUGHS / WILLIAM LEE - 1957 DIGIT edition  

This BEAT GENERATION CLASSIC is the HOLY GRAIL among WILLIAM BURROUGHS collectors: the 1957 UK Digit Books edition of JUNKIE, Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, published under his pseudonym WILLIAM LEE. This edition was withdrawn shortly after publication, and the remaining copies were pulped. Therefore this is one of the most difficult of all Burroughs books to locate, especially in collectible condition.

Junkie (alternately titled Junky) is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by William S. Burroughs. It was his first published novel and has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s.

From the website RealityStudio, a Wiilam S. Burroughs Community: "Possibly the most notorious Burroughs rarity is the Digit edition of Junkie published in Great Britain in 1957. This rarer offspring of the Ace paperback of 1953 was the first separate printing of Junkie. Collectors of pulp fiction, drug literature, first novels, Beat literature, modern highspots and of course Burroughs collectors might seek this slim volume for a lifetime. The reason for this rarity proves quite interesting. Junkie was published in Britain in 1957 as one of many examples of drug store pulp popular in the 1950′s. Like its Ace predecessor, the wrappers of the Digit Junkie possessed lurid cover art depicting a man and a woman struggling over a syringe. But unlike the Ace Junkie which was published dos-à-dos with a novel by Maurice Helbrant about a narcotics agent, the rear wrapper of the Digit Junkie depicted a risqué picture of a woman raising her skirt and injecting heroin into her exposed thigh. As in the United States, British censorship authorities at the time were investigating and regulating the pornographic qualities of pulp fiction cover art. The rear wrapper of Junkie was just too graphic and British authorities demanded the book never hit the stands and in fact demanded that the entire print run be pulped. The result was a legendary collectible."

In 2006 a copy of this paperback in rather bad condition was auctioned at eBAY and was sold at a record setting price. Just Google 'BookThink Junkie William Lee' to read the whole story. This copy is in much, much better condtion, as you can see in the scans with this listing. I bought it myself in 1978, at a small Brighton bookstore and it has been on my own bookshelf ever since.

The book will be shipped worldwide, free of charge, registered and insured.