Grassblade Jungle.
FIRST EDITION. Half title, illus. Orig. black cloth. Green & black pictorial d.w., unclipped; edges v. sl. toned & rubbed. Inscribed 'Peter, with much love from Nesta May 8th 1958', ALsS, one from Nesta Pain & one from her daughter Angela to Peter folded & loosely inserted. Illustrations and dustjacket by Rosamund Seymour. Nesta Pain, 1905-1995, was an author and an influential broadcaster for the BBC. Described by Charles Hodgson as 'a scholar of questioning outlook', she worked on a broad range of topics. It is easy to see the appeal of a book on insects, small beings toiling for the greater good, for the left-wing publisher MacGibbon and Kee, but Pain's prose is splendidly idiosyncratic, and her observations (please excuse the pun) enjoyably waspish. She seems particularly impatient with honey bees on the grounds that 'a reputation for virtue is seldom endearing'; she goes on to accuse them of 'loafing about the hive' and declares their 'facade of intelligence is a fraud'. The book is entertaining and informative. Nesta's letter to Peter thanks him profusely for recommending her daughter Angela to the News Chronicle and goes on to bemoan the 'lack of good parts for women in the kind of programmes I produce'. Angela's letter also offers thanks, describing Peter's letter to the paper as 'a huge boost to the Pain prestige'.
More from Jarndyce, The 19th Century Booksellers
Jampot Smith.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. brown cloth. Grey pictorial d.w., clipped; a little scuffed in places. Foyles' bookseller's ticket on leading pastedown, gift inscription on leading f.e.p. Scarce in the Jillian Willett dustjacket. A coming-of-age novel set in Llandudno, Brooks treats teenage angst, sexual awakening, and the emergence of identity with care and tenderness, and the results are rather beautiful. The Wales Arts Review called it 'a little wonder, full of delicate insight and shot through with the optimism and hormones of life on the cusp of adulthood, which will come all too soon for the young characters who populate its pages because of the war and its recruitments'. Anthony Burgess considered it proof of Brooks's 'considerable stature', and Michael Kustow praised it as 'a small classic. [that] will outlast its period and provincial setting' - a novel that deserves to be better known. The Sports of Cruelty: fairies, folk-songs, charms and other country matters in the work of William Blake.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. black cloth; small mark to front board. Black pictorial d.w., unclipped. A nice copy. Inscription by the publisher on t.p. reads, 'For John Symonds, with all manner of good wishes from the Publishers, Cecil Woolf'. Cecil Woolf was the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, who set up his own imprint after working with them at the Hogarth Press. The recipient is John Symonds, the literary executor of Aleister Crowley and author of several biographies of the mystic. The Village.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. black cloth; sl. cocked & a little marked. Black & white pictorial d.w., unclipped; a little rubbed, edges toned, short tear to leading hinge. Ownership stamp of W. Atkinson on leading pastedown. A clever novel, which uses the end of the Second World War (it famously opens on the final night of the conflict) to explore class differences in rural Britain; the complexities are in character relationships rather than plot. The Spectator wrote that this 'traditionally organised novel of English village life is more than a gentle dig at quirky English behaviour. It is a precise, evocative but unsentimental account of a period of transition; it's an absorbing novel, and a useful piece of social history.' The Divided Self. A study of sanity and madness.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. green cloth. Orange & black pictorial d.w., unclipped; edges v. sl. rubbed but a lovely copy. Signed 'Ronald Laing' on leading f.e.p. Scarce, especially so signed. Laing's first book, in which he posits that mental illness is a result of a fragmentation between the 'self' as we see it and the 'self' others project on to us. It also introduces the idea that 'madness' can be a response to an environment, rather than merely a discrete event in the brain. It revolutionised public understanding of mental illness, and as such is one of the most important works of the twentieth century. Political Prisoner.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. black cloth. Black printed d.w., unclipped; edges rubbed, rear panel & verso marked, small closed tear to rear panel. Inscribed 'To my co-author and his wife my fellow countrywoman with love and gratitude London September 1959' Paul Ignotus, 1901-1978, was a Hungarian journalist, interned by the Communist government while working for the BBC. Political Prisoner is an account of the fifteen years he spent in near total isolation, and the brutality he witnessed. Most moving is the chapter on falling in love with a woman in a neighbouring cell (through the seemingly time-honoured method of tapping on the walls). We can find no record of a co-author, but the inscription is both warm and intriguing. Zone of the Interior.
FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. blue linen-grained cloth. Orange printed d.w., unclipped; edges worn & sl. chipped. Inscribed to the book collector John Baxter on leading f.e.p. The inscription reads 'Dear John - I honestly can't recall if this is "autiobography" or not. It isn't, I think. This was the bloodiest hard piece I've ever written. It's meant to be a comedy. The Brits never got the joke - They banned it. All best, Clancy'. Clancy Sigal, 1926-2017, was an American writer who moved to the U.K. after being subpoenaed by the House Committee for Un-American Activities. On arrival, he was hugely impressed by R.D. Laing, and was a key member of his Philadelphia Association, based at Kingsley Hall in East London. Sigal eventually became disillusioned with Laing's guru-like behaviour (which is to say infliction of his own pathologies on the group) and the 'acrid and soul-punishing' ' cursed meetings of the inner circle'. Zone of the Interior is a biting roman-a-clef, which did not appear in the U.K. until 2005. Mainstream British publishers feared a libel suit from Laing, and the smaller more subversive presses, while by no means immune to such fears, were also reluctant to criticise Laing, then a darling of the counter culture. Mine Boy.
FIRST EDITION. Half title, wartime economy paper. E.ps a little spotted. Orig. green cloth. Green & yellow pictorial d.w., unclipped; spine a little chipped at head & tail, edges sl. worn, rear panel a little marked. An unusually good copy of a work generally found in poor condition. The earliest edition listed on Copac is the 1954 Faber & Faber printing but there are copies of this 1946 edition at the BL and NLS. Peter Abrahams, 1919-2017, was a South African novelist and journalist. Mine Boy, his third novel, is widely credited with being the first work to bring the horrors of apartheid to an international readership. It focuses on Xuma, a black miner who is shocked by the treatment of workers by white mine-owners, and involves himself in political activism. It is particularly strong on disease and trauma introduced by colonial rule, and the critic Megan Jones praised Abrahams's acute observations on 'organisation of urban life by racist capitalism' (indeed, Abrahams grew up in the Johannesburg slums in which the novel is set). A seminal novel, with an abiding influence: in Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah's first novel, the narrator encounters a man reading it on a train.
The Preserving Machine, and other stories. FIRST U.K. EDITION.
Half title. Orig. red cloth. Yellow typographic d.w., unclipped; upper edge of rear panel v. sl. toned. A lovely bright copy. First published in the U.S. in 1969. The stories herein first appeared in various magazines. 'What the Dead Men Say' appears in American printings but not the British one. Included are some of Dick's best-known stories, among them 'We Can Remember it for You Wholesale', the basis for the film Total Recall, and the wonderful 'Roog', an ostensibly small, quaint story that on further inspection 'tells of obscure menace and a good creature who cannot convey knowledge of that menace to those he loves'. Beam of Malice. Fifteen short, dark stories.
HAMILTON, Alex. FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. blue & yellow moiré cloth. Black, red & white pictorial d.w., unclipped; edges a little toned, small closed tear to front panel. Inscribed 'To Francis fifteen years on from Alex, Jan 66'. Dustjacket by Peter Edwards. Includes the classic chiller 'The Attic Express'. The effect of these stories rests on tilting the familiar into the uncanny, with disproportionate results. Ramsay Campbell called him 'one of the absolute masters of the sunlit nightmare, the tale of insidious disquiet and relentless unease. He's a true original, and it's past time that he took his place in the pantheon of the elegantly macabre.' The recipient is Francis King: both men were contributors to the Pan Book of Horror anthologies. The Shape of Innocence. FIRST U.S. EDITION.
MANNING, Rosemary. Half title. Orig. buff cloth. Yellow pictorial d.w., unclipped; sl. rubbed, rear panel a little marked. Inscribed 'Bill and Marjory Allport with the author's love, Rosemary Manning March 1961'. First published in London the preceding year under the title Look, Stranger. Manning's first novel under her real name concerns an island community unable to accept a newcomer with epilepsy. The novel is a fairly obvious allegory for society's failure to accept Manning's sexuality; she underwent 'conversion therapy' in the 1930s, and did not feel able to come out until 1980. The Self and Others. Further studies in sanity and madness.
LAING, Ronald David. FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. green cloth; tail of spine v. sl. rubbed. White pictorial d.w., unclipped. Signed 'Ronald Laing, Nov. 1961' on leading f.e.p. Donation pledge slip for the boycott of South African goods signed by Laing loosely inserted. Laing's second work, in which he explores the effect of external conditions on the individual, sets out the terms by which he is now remembered. Irrespective of how controversial a figure he later became, this is a hugely sensitive, well-researched work, and a major contribution to the field. The Naked Kiss.
FULLER, Samuel. FIRST EDITION. 3pp integral cata.; sl. toned. Orig. white pictorial wrappers; a little rubbed & dusted, a couple of small creases, small splits & sl. fading to spine. Inscribed '10-14-66 To Nicholas Garnham - good luck on your projects, Sam Fuller' on titlepage. OCLC lists three copies only: at SUNY, Illinois, and National Library of South Africa. Samuel Fuller, 1912-1997, was a director, screenwriter, and novelist. Known for working largely outside the studio system, his films remain extremely powerful in their ruthless yet sympathetic depiction of confused characters in brutal situations. The Naked Kiss is his own novelisation of one of his greatest movies, about a sex worker who tries to start a new life as a nurse in a small town only to find her life destroyed by male desire anyway. Nicholas Garnham, b. 1937. is a Professor of Media Studies. His book, Samuel Fuller (presumably one of the 'projects' mentioned in the inscription), is among the first to take the director's work seriously, comparing him to Brecht and exploring his influence on Goddard. Her. 7th impression.
FERLINGHETTI, Lawrence. Half title. Black & white pictorial wrappers, sewn & glued; rubbed, rear wrapper a little marked, small tear at tail of spine. Ownership signature on half title of 'G. R. Selerie Berkely [sic] California 1968'. Inscribed on half title 'For Gavin Selarie [sic] - in London Lawerence Ferlinghetti July 80'. Wrapper illustration by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Although better known for his poetry, Her is Ferlinghetti's stream-of-consciousness, experimental novel that in true Beat style lacks punctuation and a straightforward narrative, instead being a 'labyrinth-dream'. From the library of Gavin Selerie, 1949-2023, British poet and conductor of the Riverside Interviews for which he interviewed poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The date of his interview with the author coincides with the date of the inscription. Our Mother’s House.
GLOAG, Julian. FIRST EDITION. Half title; sl. spotting to early pages & edges. Green & black pictorial d.w., unclipped; a couple marks to front panel, rear panel a little unevenly toned. Praised by Evelyn Waugh, Gloag's first novel tells of seven children who decide to conceal their mother's death in order to avoid being split up by the authorities. Christopher Fry called it 'a penetrating and touching story, which at every point touches on even more than it speaks'. It bears similarities to Ian McEwan's 1978 work The Cement Garden, leading Gloag to publicly accuse McEwan of plagiarism, and to write Lost and Found, in which an author passes off someone else's work as his own. McEwan denies having heard of Our Mother's House prior to Gloag's accusation. Milton Glaser's rather fey dustjacket is stunning. The Canticle of the Rose. Selected Poems 1920-1947.
SITWELL, Edith. FIRST EDITION. Half title. Orig. blue cloth; a little marked, spine faded. Buff printed d.w., unclipped; a little dusted, spine sl. darkened & split at head. Bookplate of David E. Wickham on leading pastedown, inscribed 'For dearest June with love from Edith' on leading f.e.p. Bookplate of Jonathan and Phillida Gili loosely inserted. Edith Sitwell, 1887-1967, was a more experimental poet than she is sometimes given credit for, indeed The New Statesman said that in 'losing every battle, she won the campaign'. Jonathan Gili was a filmmaker whose credits included the flawed-but-engaging cult movies Gumshoe and Bronco Bullfrog (the latter is certainly worth seeing). Phillida Gili is a book illustrator, best remembered for her wonderful 1992 production of The Nutcracker. Poems.
LEWIS, Clive Staples, ed. Walter Hooper. FIRST EDITION. Half title; sl. offsetting to endpapers. Cream d.w., unclipped; spine & edges sl. darkened, sl. wear to head of spine. Presentation inscription in leading f.e.p. from the editor, '23 February, 1965. Oxford. To Jane Taylor with the good wishes of her friend, Walter Hooper.' Walter Hooper, 1931-2020, was an American writer who made the acquaintance of Lewis after writing him a letter praising his 1947 book Miracles. Hooper visited Oxford in 1963 and became Lewis' correspondence secretary while his health was in decline (he died a few months later). The two men became so close that Hooper edited collections of Lewis's work, became the literary advisor for his estate, and collaborated on a biography with Roger Llancelyn Green. After Lewis's death, Hooper devoted himself to caring for the author's alcoholic brother, Warren. The book was inscribed to Jane Taylor, a student at Oxford who knew Hooper when he was the Chaplain of Wadham College. First Lesson.
ASTON, James, pseud. (Terence Hanbury White) FIRST EDITION. Half title, v. sl. spotting to prelims. Orig. yellow cloth; v. sl. marked. Buff pictorial d.w., clipped; a little rubbed & marked, rear panel sl. creased with two small closed tears. A nice copy. An early novel of White's, in which a buttoned-up Cambridge don has some erotic adventures with a liberated foreign type. The book was published under a pseudonym for fear of causing scandal, as White was then working as a teacher. The effort was in vain: one of his students read it and he was hauled up before the headmaster. The sexual antics are unlikely to startle even the most sheltered modern reader, but White is such an astute scholar of English stuffiness that there's humour to be had nonetheless. 