Greene (Graham) The Name of Action
£225
London, Heinemann, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original dark blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine.
Graham Greene’s second novel. Oliver Chant, a disillusioned young Englishman, goes to Trier in the Rhineland to support a revolutionary underground plotting against the city’s dictator. He falls in love with the dictator’s wife, Anne-Marie Demassener, and his divided loyalties carry the conspirators towards armed rising. The title comes from Hamlet’s soliloquy, quoted on the title-page: “and lose the name of action”.
The book was poorly reviewed and sold badly, and Greene later disowned it. He suppressed it, together with his third novel, Rumour at Nightfall, and it has remained out of print ever since. In Ways of Escape he described its prose as “flat and stilted” and its hero as “a daydream in the mind of a young romantic author”. Because it was never reprinted, the book is found only in its original editions: Heinemann in London (1930) and Doubleday in New York (1931). It has therefore become a relative rarity.
In stock
A little light spotting; minor rubbing to cloth, but a good copy overall.
Wobbe A3a
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