KAVAN, Anna.
FIRST EDITION. Half title; edges a little spotted. Orig. black cloth; sl. wear to tail of spine. Orig. buff d.w., unclipped; a little rubbed, chipped, spotted & toned, neat tape repairs to verso. BL only on Copac. The true first edition (The 1971 Peter Owen reprint is much more common). According to her biographer, Jeremy Reed, Kavan, 1901-68, was unable to find a publisher, so paid the maverick Angus Downie to print 500 copies. Downie went bankrupt shortly afterwards, and all remaining copies were pulped. The dustjacket is exceptionally scarce. Kavan was born Helen Woods Ferguson and took the name Anna Kavan from a character in one of her own stories. Admired by Ballard, Jean Rhys, and Doris Lessing, her genius for the uncanny (she is probably the closest thing English literature has to a complete distillation of Freud's 'Unheimlich') came at a horrifying psychic cost, and her life was blighted by extreme depression and heroin addiction. She wrote compellingly on mental illness, and was unparalleled in her ability to render familiar situations alien and frightening. This novel is a bleak, fragmented account of her relationship with her recently deceased mother, and sees the weird talent evident in her last and greatest novel Ice turned on to family life. Utterly unique, she is one of the greatest twentieth-century English novelists. With thanks to Jeremy Reed.
HALL, Angus.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. red cloth. White pictorial d.w., unclipped; upper edge a little creased, spine sl. chipped at head. Author inscription 'To Martin - Spaghetti King of San Eulalia - Angus Hall' on leading f.e.p. Angus Hall, 1932-2009, is best remembered as a writer and editor of horror. The High-Bouncing Lover, the story of a failed writer who ends up working as an escort to wealthy women, is his second novel and takes its title (optimistically but appositely) from the epigraph to The Great Gatsby. A mild but witty satire; its strength lies in not bothering to make fun of 1960s clothing, haircuts, or slang, but in taking aim at the culture as a whole.
BLUMENFELD, Simon.
FIRST EDITION. Half title, 8pp cata. Orig. orange cloth; a little rubbed. Black d.w., unclipped; a little rubbed at edges, small nick to spine, rear panel sl. dusted. Presentation inscription 'To E. Welch with best wishes from Simon Blumenfeld 26/4/37'. Unusual in such good condition and especially so inscribed. Set a generation earlier than Blumenfeld's more famous first novel, Jew Boy, Phineas Kahn is apparently based on an ancestor of the author's wife and tracks the indomitable title character from Tsarist Russia to the East End of London. The final section, which focuses on Kahn's children, is not wholly successful and slides into Victorian sentimentality, but there is a great deal of life, humour and verve in the novel. Blumenfeld is an important London writer who deserves to be better remembered.
KAYPER-MENSAH, Albert William.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. blue cloth. Blue & pink pictorial d.w., unclipped; v. sl. rubbed & creased. 16-line TLS & typed 37-line poem, both on Ghanaian Embassy headed paper, loosely inserted. Albert Kayper-Mensah, 1923-1980, was a Ghanaian poet, diplomat, editor, and broadcaster. The Dark Wanderer, his first poetry collection, is divided into four sections: 'Germany', 'Africa', and 'Reflections' on each. For the most part, the poems in this volume are concise, taut and vivid. The typed poem 'The Birth of Light in Bethlehem' is sent with Christmas wishes, and the TLS - addressed to the British Beat poet Michael Horovitz - is a brief, friendly request for a review. Mensah describes it as his first book, bemoaning that another collection is stuck in production at Heinemann.
KAVAN, Anna.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. black cloth, spine lettered in silver; ex libris sticker on half title. Black printed d.w., clipped; a little spotted & rubbed, some creasing at folds, closed tear on front panel. Kavan was born Helen Woods and took the name Anna Kavan from a character in one of her short stories. Admired by talents as diverse as Ballard, Jean Rhys, L.P. Hartley, and Doris Lessing, her genius for the uncanny (she is probably the closest thing English literature has to a complete distillation of Freud's 'Unheimlich') came at a horrifying psychic cost, and her life was blighted by extreme depression and heroin addiction. Ice is her surrealist masterpiece and one of the most important works of the twentieth century. Kavan's protagonist - surely one of the least sympathetic characters in all literature - pursues a young woman through a terrifying world of encroaching ice. While the degree of autobiography in the novel is disputed, the cold, alienation, and horrifying compulsive pursuit render it as convincing a depiction of addiction as anything ever written.