120,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ฟ

Overnight NZ-wide delivery ๐Ÿš€ Weโ€™ve moved into our new bookstore and warehouse ๐ŸŽ‰

A Contract with God and Other Stories of Dropsie Avenue

A Norton Critical Edition
4.24 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 4,392 ratings, 386 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
A Contract with God and Other Stories of Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner explores the lives of residents in a Jewish tenement in New York. Through a series of poignant and insightful graphic narratives, Eisner delves into themes of community, hardship, faith, and humanity, laying the groundwork for modern graphic novels.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$5199
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 3-4 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in the origins of the graphic novel, students studying comics as literature, and those drawn to socially conscious storytelling with historical and cultural depth.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

  • Jared Gardner's insightful introduction and explanatory notes.
  • Generous selections from four of Will Eisner's major graphic novels and story collections, carefully chosen with student readers in mind.
  • Will Eisner's interviews and published writing on comics and the graphic novel genre from 1978 to 2000.
  • Thirteen wide-ranging reviews and assessments of Eisner's works.
  • Critical essays by Andrew J. Kunka, Paul Williams, Jeremy Dauber, Greg M. Smith, and Derek Parker Royal.
  • A chronology of Will Eisner's life and work and a selected bibliography.

A Contract with God and Other Stories of Dropsie Avenue by Will Eisner is a groundbreaking work that contributes significantly to the genre of graphic novels.

Series: Norton Critical Editions

View all
  • The Arabian Nights
    Few works of literature are as familiar and beloved as The Arabian Nights. Yet few remain also as unknown. In English, The Arabian Nights is a literary work of relatively recent dateโ€”the first versions of the tales appeared in English barely two hundred years ago. The tales are accompanied by a preface, a note on the text, and explanatory annotations....
    Paperback
    $4799
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Alice in Wonderland
    This Norton Critical Edition includes: The texts and original illustrations from the 1897 editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as well as the 1878 edition of The Hunting of the Snark. Revised and updated footnotes, headnotes, and introductory materials by Donald J. Gray. Selections from Carroll's diaries, letters, and other source materials examining three distinct periods...
    Paperback
    $4199
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Paradise Lost
    This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1674 text of Paradise Lost, with emendations and adoptions from the first edition and from the scribal manuscript. Spelling and punctuation have been modernised for student readers. An illuminating introduction and abundant explanatory annotations by Gordon Teskey. Source and background materials, including Milton's greatest prose work, Areopagitica, in its entirety and key selections from...
    Paperback
    $10700
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • The Secret Agent
    This Norton Critical Edition includes: - The first English book edition of the novel (1907), accompanied by explanatory footnotes. - Four illustrations. - Contemporary sources that informed Conrad's writing of the novel, including newspaper accounts of the "Greenwich Bomb Outrage," articles from the anarchist press, earlier fictional treatments of the Martial Bourdin case (the inspiration for Adolph Verloc), and important...
    Paperback
    $3399
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Mill on the Floss
    The text of The Mill on the Floss, based on the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions. Backgrounds includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centring on the novel's content and composition; Brother and Sister (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews...
    Paperback
    $3599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The House of the Seven Gables
    This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first edition of the novel, published in 1851 by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. Robert S. Levine's insightful introduction, revised headnotes, expanded explanatory footnotes, and note on the text and annotations. A generous selection of carefully chosen primary materialsโ€”three of them new to the Second Editionโ€”intended to provide readers with essential backgrounds on the novel's...
    Paperback
    $3799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Pilgrim's Progress
    Briefly imprisoned for preaching without a license, John Bunyan is believed to have begun writing the most famous Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, while in jail. The Pilgrim's Progress was published in 1678 (Part I) and 1684 (Part II). Edited and annotated with the student reader in mind, this Norton Critical Edition is the indispensable guide to the language, allusions,...
    Paperback
    $4299
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Coquette and The Boarding School
    Hannah Webster Foster's two major Early American works with a wealth of primary materials are now available in a Norton Critical Edition. Published anonymously in 1797, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette grabbed American interest with its ripped-from-the-headlines story of sex and scandal. A steady bestseller for decades, the seduction novel was passed down through generations; indeed, its heroine became better...
    Paperback
    $3699
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Conjure Stories
    Fourteen conjure tales by one of America's most influential African American fiction writers. This Norton Critical Edition of The Conjure Stories arranges the tales chronologically by composition date, allowing readers to discern how Chesnutt experimented with plots and characters and with the idea of the conjure story over time. With one exception, the text of each tale is that of...
    Paperback
    $3299
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Blithedale Romance
    This Norton Critical Edition of The Blithedale Romance is based on the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, widely considered the best available edition. It is accompanied by explanatory annotations to help readers with Hawthorne's many historical and literary references, as well as with other possible sources of difficulty in the text. The section on "Contexts" is thematically...
    Paperback
    $4699
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
    Known only as the "Ex-Colored Man," the protagonist in Johnson's novel is forced to choose between celebrating his African American heritage or "passing" as an average white man in a post-Reconstruction America that is rapidly changing. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 text. It is accompanied by a detailed introduction, explanatory footnotes, and a note on the...
    Paperback
    $3699
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Robinson Crusoe
    Michael Shinagel has collated the reprint with all six authorised editions published by Taylor in 1719 to achieve a text that is faithful to Defoe's original edition. Annotations assist the reader with obscure words and idioms, biblical references, and nautical terms. Contexts helps the reader understand the novel's historical and religious significance. Included are four contemporary accounts of marooned men,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780393284836

Publisher: WW Norton & Co

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 01 September 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: WW Norton & Co

Contributors:

  • Edited by Jared Gardner
  • Edited by Jared Gardner

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 13.0mm

Width: 142.0mm

Height: 236.0mm

Weight: 261g

Pages: 328

About the Author

Born in New York City, Will Eisner (1917โ€“2005) was the author of the legendary comic strip The Spirit, as well as fifteen graphic novels and three influential instructional textbooks. The comic industryโ€™s top awards, the Eisner Awards, are named in his honor. Jared Gardner is Joseph V. Denney Designated Professor of English at The Ohio State University. He is the author of three monographs, including Projections: Comics and the History of 21st-Century Storytelling and The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture, and he is the editor or coeditor of several volumes, including The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life. He has worked closely for many years with the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State, including serving as curator on several exhibits.

Also by Will Eisner

View all
  • Comics and Sequential Art
    Two classic drawing textbooks from an American comics pioneer, revised and enhanced for a new generation. Based on Will Eisner's legendary course at New York's School of Visual Arts, these guides have inspired generations of artists, students, teachers, and fans. In Comics and Sequential Art, Eisner reveals the basic building blocks and principles of comics, including imagery, the frame, and...
    Paperback
    $4599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Collected Will Eisner's John Law
    In 1948, Will Eisner produced the first issue of John Law Detective, which he intended to add to a line of self-published comics. However, after Eisner's Baseball Comics, Kewpies, and Pirate Comics failed to find an audience, John Law never made it to the newsstand and was quietly dropped, with much of the original artwork reworked in 1950 for his...
    Hardback
    $4999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Eerie Archives Volume 11 (Double-Sized Volume)
    Eerie Archives Volume 11 (Double-Sized Volume) presents a double shot of terror with two horrifying volumes in one. Legendary creators of legendary terror bring this packed-full double volume with twice as many ghoulish stories, previously collected in Dark Horse's hardcover volumes 11 and 12. This edition collects eight full issues of Warren Publishing's legendary Eerie horror anthology and nine covers....
    Paperback
    $9500
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • A Contract with God
    Will Eisner was present at the dawn of comics. In the 1940s, he pushed the boundaries of the medium with his acclaimed weekly comic strip The Spirit, and with the publication of A Contract with God in 1978, he created a new medium altogether: the graphic novel. It was unlike anything seen before, heralding an era when serious cartoonists were...
    Hardback
    $4999
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
    Two classic drawing textbooks from an American comics pioneer, revised and enhanced for a new generation. Based on Will Eisner's legendary course at New York's School of Visual Arts, these guides have inspired generations of artists, students, teachers, and fans. In Comics and Sequential Art, Eisner reveals the basic building blocks and principles of comics, including imagery, the frame, and...
    Paperback
    $4799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • The Plot
    The Plot, which examines the astonishing conspiracy and the fabrication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has become a worldwide phenomenon since its hardcover publication, taught in classrooms around the globe. Purported to be the actual blueprints by Jewish leaders to take over the world, the Protocols, first published in 1902, have become gospel truth to international millions....
    Paperback
    $3799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Contract with God Trilogy
    A Contract with God, originally published in 1978, was the first graphic novel: the prototypeโ€”along with Life Force and Dropsie Avenueโ€”for such seminal works as Maus and Persepolis. Set during the Great Depression, this literary trilogy, assembled in one volume for the first time, presents a treasure house of now near-mythic stories that fictionally illustrate the bittersweet tenement life of...
    Hardback
    $9200
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative
    The final volume of Will Eisnerโ€™s celebrated instructional trilogy explores the critical principle of body grammar in comics storytelling. Designed and outlined by Will Eisner before his death in 2005, this posthumous masterwork, the third and final book in the Will Eisner Instructional Series, finally reveals the secrets of Eisnerโ€™s own techniques and theories of movement, body mechanics, facial expressions,...
    Paperback
    $6100
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • A Contract with God
    A revolutionary novel, A Contract with God re-creates the neighbourhood of Will Eisner's youth through a quartet of four interwoven stories. Expressing the joy, exuberance, tragedy, and drama of life on the mythical Dropsie Avenue of the Bronx, A Contract with God is a monumental achievement, a must in the library of any graphic novel fan.
    Paperback
    $3599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks

More from Graphic Novels

View all
  • New Release
    Heartstopper Volume 6
    Read it before you see it: Heartstopper Forever movie coming soon from Netflix Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. The final installment in the bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel series about life, love, and everything that happens in between. Everyone in school knows Nick and Charlie. Everyone knows they're going to be togetherforever. But Charlie's busy with...
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Lightfall: A Place Between
    In the fourth installment of the award-winning, critically acclaimed Lightfall series, Bea, Cad, and their friends continue their quest to restore light on their dark world. Perfect for fans of Amulet and Avatar, this next book dives deeper into the magical world of Irpa, where ancient secrets and adventures abound.After surviving a shipwreckย on the Fuerre Sea, Cad washes ashore on...
    Paperback
    $1900
    Elsewhere:
    $2699
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • One Piece Box Set 1: East Blue and Baroque Works
    A premium box set of the first two story arcs of One Piece, one of the most beloved and bestselling manga series of all time! As a child, Monkey D. Luffy dreamed of becoming King of the Pirates. His life took a dramatic turn when he accidentally consumed the Gum-Gum Fruit, an enchanted Devil Fruit that granted him the incredible...
    Paperback
    $31500
    Elsewhere:
    $41000
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Warriors Graphic Novel: The Prophecies Begin #1
    An instant New York Times bestseller! With more than 40 million copies sold, Erin Hunter's Warriors series has taken the world by storm and is now available in a full-colour graphic novel adaptation. The first book covers the first two original novels in The Prophecies Begin: Into the Wild and Fire and Ice. A perfect introduction to the world of...
    Paperback
    $2000
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Jujutsu Kaisen, Vol. 28
    To gain the power he needs to save his friend from a cursed spirit, Yuji Itadori swallows a piece of a demon, only to find himself caught in the midst of a horrific war of the supernatural! In a world where cursed spirits feed on unsuspecting humans, fragments of the legendary and feared demon Ryomen Sukuna have been lost and...
    Paperback
    $1800
    Elsewhere:
    $2099
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • One Piece (Omnibus Edition), Vol. 1
    One Piece (Omnibus Edition), Vol. 1 by Eiichiro Oda invites readers on an exhilarating journey across the vast and treacherous oceans. Follow the ambitious young pirate, Monkey D. Luffy, and his eclectic crew as they embark on an epic quest to uncover the legendary treasure known as the One Piece, a prize that will crown its possessor as the King...
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $2899
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live
    From the New York Times bestselling author and creator of the hit MrBallen Podcast and YouTube channel comes a vividly illustrated graphic novel featuring nine spine-chilling stories, based on real events, of the horror that lurks within the unknown. In MrBallen Presents: Where Nightmares Live, John Allen, known popularly as MrBallen, returns with another heart-stopping collection of strange and mysterious...
    Hardback
    $4400
    Elsewhere:
    $5500
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • One Piece Box Set 2: Skypiea and Water Seven
    One Piece Box Set 2: Skypiea and Water Seven by Eiichiro Oda is a magnificent collection that continues the epic adventure of Monkey D. Luffy and his diverse and dynamic crew as they strive to reach the pinnacle of pirate greatness. This premium box set, a must-have for any manga enthusiast, includes volumes 24-46 and seamlessly transitions readers through the...
    Paperback
    $32900
    Elsewhere:
    $41000
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Fourth Wing The Graphic Novel: Volume One
    Pre-order
    Fourth Wing The Graphic Novel: Volume One
    The first volume of a stunning graphic novel edition of the no. 1ย Sunday Timesย phenomenon,ย Fourth Wing,ย adapted by Rebecca Yarros herself!ย ย  This deluxe hardcover edition features a shimmering metallic, foil-stamped cover design, plus an exclusive art print of Violet and Xaden's first kiss, packaged in a stylish slipcase.ย  Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders as...
    Slipcase Hardback
    $11000
    Elsewhere:
    $12000
    Pre-order
    Out 6 Apr 2027
  • Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat
    In this hilarious full-colour graphic novel, Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat by Li Chen, readers are introduced to Cat Town's best kitten detective on a new and exciting adventure. When Detective Beans realises his favourite hat has gone missing, he quickly jumps into action to crack the case. Armed with his wit, determination, and a love...
    By Li Chen
    Paperback
    $1900
    Elsewhere:
    $2200
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Wings of Fire the Graphic Novel - The First Seven Books
    Not every dragonet wants a destiny . . . Clay has grown up under the mountain, chosen along with four other dragonets to fulfill a mysterious prophecy and end the war between the dragon tribes of Pyrrhia. He's not so sure about the prophecy part, but Clay can't imagine not living with the other dragonets; they're his best friends. So...
    Paperback
    $9000
    Elsewhere:
    $11000
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Jujutsu Kaisen, Vol. 1
    Jujutsu Kaisen, Vol. 1 by Gege Akutami introduces readers to the gripping world of jujutsu sorcery and supernatural battles. This first volume sets the stage for an explosive adventure that intertwines the fate of humans and cursed spirits. In a world where cursed spirits, malevolent entities born from human negative emotions, prey on the unsuspecting, fragments of the legendary demon...
    Paperback
    $1900
    Elsewhere:
    $2099
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.