A very good copy, in near fine jacket.
Jacket design by Michael Ayrton.
£495
London, Secker & Warburg, 1958.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 18s.
Largely autobiographical, Peyrefitte’s famous work on adolescence deals with an intimate relationship between two boys at a Roman Catholic boarding school and how it is destroyed by a priest’s will to protect them from homosexuality. An uncommon title, especially with the Ayrton jacket in such good condition.
Out of stock
A very good copy, in near fine jacket.
Jacket design by Michael Ayrton.
or the quest rescue and retreat of Emin Governor of Equatoria
London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1890.
First edition, trade issue. 8vo. 2 vols. Original pictorial cloth blocked in black & gilt.
An attractive first edition account of Stanley's last major African venture, an attempt to extract Emin Pasha, a European doctor serving as governor of a remote Sudanese province that had been cut off by a religious uprising. Between 1887 and 1889 his expedition forced a path through the Congo basin and dense, unmapped rainforest, reached the Great Lakes, and eventually made for the Indian Ocean with Emin in tow. The journey was catastrophic in human cost but geographically significant, bringing the first detailed reports of Lake Edward and the glaciated Ruwenzori mountains, long rumoured in classical sources.
Detective Fiction
London, George Allen, 1912.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Hubin listed crime thriller, distinctly uncommon in the jacket.
Non-Fiction
London, Secker & Warburg, 1939.
First UK edition. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
Signed with the author's compliments to front free endpaper. A perceptive study of the historical, cultural, and political roots of German antisemitism. German-born Jewish economist and writer F.R. Bienenfeld traces the long evolution of anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany and the forces that enabled its transformation into state policy under National Socialism. After fleeing to England in 1939, he worked with the World Jewish Congress, helped draft German reparations claims following the Second World War, and later contributed to the legal preparations for the Nuremberg Trials.
Modern Literature
London, Secker & Warburg, 1966.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced 21s.
Harrowing portrayal of a year in the life of a writer losing the motivation to continue after a recent miscarriage while her marriage comes apart. It examines the breakup of a marriage and the protagonist's subsequent struggle to rebuild her world. It was published about the time of the author's own divorce from George Figes. No copies currently for sale online.
Sexuality & Erotica
Translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks
London, Secker & Warburg, 1968.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Mishima's groundbreaking novel, Forbidden Colours (original Kinjiki, 1951), explores same-sex love, aesthetic obsession, misogyny and social constraints in post-war Tokyo, the title being a euphemism for erotic, forbidden love and colours once restricted by Japanese court rank.