Fiction | Invisible Books

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Miguel Angel Asturias | The President | Gollancz | 1967 | Second impression in unclipped jacket. Book is slant, with front cover set forward. Top edge of pageblock is dusty & foxed, outer edge foxed. There are a couple of long tears at the top edge of the jacket, & tears along the creases of the spine & front flap. There is loss to the edge & extremities of the spine of the jacket, & the corresponding areas of the hard cover beneath are sunned. The text pages are unmarked. | £35

Isaac Babel; Walter Morison (ed., tr.); Lionel Trilling (intr.) | The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel | Methuen | 1957 | First printing in unclipped jacket. Spine of jacket is somewhat faded. Top 3cm or so of the jacket’s spine is missing, the exposed area of the book’s spine is faded. | £25

Alexander Baron | From the City, from the Plough | Jonathan Cape | 1948 | Fourth impression in year of first publication. At first glance, a good to very good copy, lacking its dustjacket. But closer inspection reveals the traces of removed labels on the front & back pastedowns & a small light splash mark in the lower margin of the first page of text. The edges of the cover are rubbed, & the outer edges of the pageblock are foxed. | £30

Samuel Butler [published anonymously] | Erewhon, or Over the Range | Trübner & Co | 1872 | Third edition. A handsome copy, with minor external wear, & a little scrape to the rear pastedown. A later prospectus for the Cape edition of Butler’s works is loosely inserted. | £75

Lewis Carroll; Mabel Lucie Attwell [illus.] | Alice in Wonderland | Raphael Tuck | Cover is worn, with some pen marking. Name & clumsily written numbers on ffep. Binding reinforced at a number of places with long sellotape strips. Paper foxed. Plate facing p.28 torn & not very successfully mended with tape. Plate facing p.36 loose. Plate facing p.44 is missing. Lower corner of p.49 torn away (does not affect text area). Closed tear up lower margin of plate facing p.54 (just touches the lower edge of the illustration). Corner of plate facing p.98 lightly creased. Short closed tear in upper margin of plate facing p.138 (does not affect illustration). Despite these faults, this remains an attractive copy. The plates are beautifully coloured, & the line drawings on the text pages still look very good indeed. | £30

G. D. H. & M. Cole | The Toys of Death | Hennel Locke | 1948 | Paper tanned with age, ffep creased, boards rather worn & scuffed at edges, paper strip on spine becoming unglued at extremities, red pen mark on upper edge of page-block, a biro note on rear endpaper. | £150

Lawrence Durrell | The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea | Faber | 1969 | 0571052045 1969 printing of the collected edition. The publishing information page states “First published in this edition 1969”, but I believe the novels were first collected in 1962, the date of the collection’s copyright & Durrell’s preface. Whatever, this is a very handsome copy in an unclipped jacket, with a very little foxing to the outer edge of the page block, minimal dustmarking to the lower edge, & some erased initials (or maybe a stock code) at the upper corner of the ffep. | £40

Herbert Huncke | The Herbert Huncke Reader| 1997 | hardback in jacket, minor wear to cover & edge, ready to post in UK | £50

Alister Kershaw | Excellent Stranger | Reed & Harris | 1944 | Dedication, apparently from author, on ffep, inked correction to front flap. Some wear to edges of jacket, plain back cover rather rubbed, Foxing or similar marks in margin of frontispiece & on title page. | £75

Henry Miller | Gallery One: Henry Miller Water Colours. Reopening exhibition 1st March-24th March 1956. | Gallery One | 1956 | Folded sheet with an introductory note (presumably by Victor Musgrave), a list of the 17 paintings by Miller shown in the front room, & a further list of the 11 paintings by other artists shown in the rear room (including the young Gillian Ayres). A further sheet reprints an article from the Times of March 12 1956: “The Novelist as Painter: Further Episode in Gallery One”. The front of the main sheet is marked, with a little tea splash on one upper corner & a paint or ink mark beside the title. A row of numbers (prices in guineas?) has been lightly written alongside the list of Miller’s watercolours. The Times offprint has old light crease marks from being folded into quarters at some time, & the exposed edges are somewhat worn. | £50

Octave Mirbeau | A Chambermaid’s Diary | Fortune Press | In unclipped jacket with French price label on spine. A couple of 3 cm tears to upper edge of jacket. Outer edge of page-block is heavily foxed. | £30

Michael Moorcock | Elric of Melnibone: the Tale of the Eternal Champion, Vol. 8 | Millennium | 1993 | 9781857980370 First printing of this collection in unclipped jacket. An evidently secondhand copy, with minor wear to jacket & outer edge, endpapers & outer edge of page-block foxed, lower edge dustmarked. | £80

Willard Motley | Let No Man Write my Epitaph | Longmans | 1959 | Second impression in unclipped jacket. Main design looks good, but the white background of the back cover is rather marked. Presumably some kind of file copy, as there is a faintly stamped date reference on the ffep. | £25

Benito Pérez Galdós; Agnes Moncy Gullón (tr.) | Fortunata and Jacinta | Viking | 1987 | First UK edition of this translation. No jacket, front endpaper creased, outer edge of page-block foxed & marked. No problem with text pages. A sturdy well-bound copy. | £50

Edgar Allen Poe | Essays and Stories | G. Bell | 1914 | Bright, fresh copy still in its original jacket. Pencilling on front panel of jacket, back panel lightly marked, some loss to extremities of spine, top of spine reinforced on reverse. Book in very good condition indeed. | £30

Jean Rhys | Quartet | Andre Deutsch | 1969 | First British publication of this novel under this name. At first glance, very good indeed, but the top of the back flap is a little ragged with old insect damage, & the spine of the book itself is bumped at the top edge & creased down the middle. Still a very good-looking copy. | £100

Jean Rhys | Wide Sargasso Sea | World Books | 1967 | World Books edition, published in the year following the Deutsch first printing. Jacket looks impressive, but has a 2cm closed tear to the top edge of the front panel,a little loss around the top of the spine, & creasing at the top of the back panel. Internally very good indeed. | £50

Muriel Spark; Michael Ayrton (illus.) | Not to Disturb | Observer | 1971 | Signed on half title page by both Spark & Ayrton. Apparently one of an edition of 500, but the space where the number should have been written has been left blank. Ayrton’s etching & its protective sheet are loosely inserted between the half title & title pages. The book’s protective wrap is worn & tatty, & its cloth spine is blotchy & discoloured, presumably from exposure to damp at some time: the main area of the cover has also picked up some marks. The outer edge of the page-block is foxed. There is no problem with the text pages. | £40

E. Temple Thurston | The City of Beautiful Nonsense | Penguin | 1939 | First Penguin printing. Spine creased & lightly faded, worn with a little loss at lower edge. I assume that this book would have originally been issued in a dustjacket, which is no longer present. | £100

R. G. Waldeck | Athene Palace Bucharest | Constable | 1943 | F. Tennyson Jesse’s copy, with her bookplate on front pastedown, & a Times Book Club stamp on the rear pastedown. First English edition, no jacket, with a light stain on the front cover & faded spine. | £50

Denton Welch | In Youth is Pleasure | Vision | 1950 | Hardcover in unclipped jacket. The spine of the jacket has been reinforced with clear tape on its reverse: there is some loss to the edges of the jacket, most noticeably at the top of the spine. The pale cloth cover of the book is foxed at the edges, as is the page-block, & a little worn at the extremities of the spine. | £50

Virginia Woolf; Vanessa Bell (illus.) | Flush | Methuen | 1960 | First publication in the Venture Library series. Slim book is very slightly bowed, & rather slant, with the front cover set forward. Spine is a little sunned & is lightly marked. Paper is foxed, most heavily at outer edge. Old sterling price marked in ink on ffep. Still an attractive copy. | £30

Virginia Woolf | Mrs Dalloway | Zodiac Press | 1947 | Unclipped jacket is chipped at edges, with some loss at extremities of spine & lower corner of front panel. Closed tear at bottom of fold of back flap/back panel. Narrow three-cornered tear at top of fold of back panel/spine. Previous owner’s monogram & date on ffep. Outer edge of page-block & endpapers foxed. | £100

Virginia Woolf; Angelica Garnett (intr.) | Night and Day | Hogarth Press | 1990 | 9780701208776 No. 183 of 1000 copies in the Definitive Collected Edition. This is a damaged copy, suitable for rebinding, with a gouge taken out of the front panel of the jacket, & abrasion to the boards underneath it. The spine & edge of the jacket are sunned. The outer edge of the page-block is lightly foxed/marked, while the interior of the book is in excellent condition. | £50

Stefan Zweig | Stories and Legends | Cassell | 1955 | Hallam Edition copy in unclipped jacket with publisher’s price sticker on front flap. Edges of jacket are worn, with a little loss, spine is faded, rear flap creased. Book itself in very good condition. | £30