Man Mirror Biographical Reflection by Garrett William (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First American edition. 307pp. Duodecimo [19 cm] Blue cloth over boards, with the title stamped in gilt on the backstrip and front board. The spine is faded, and the endpapers are glue-stained. Else, the pages are tanned, but very clean. Pieces of a dust jacket have been mounted to a sheet of paper fashioned into a dust wrapper. From the collection of Berkeley book collector and letterpress printer John Ruyle. Bleiler Checklist, p. 80 (London edition). From the publisher- "This ingenious story concerns itself with the exciting adventures of a man-in-the-street. Its complications are based upon the natural faults and limitations, the aspirations and inhibitions of a typical average man. Jeremy Dilke, a London broker, who lived monotonously with his wife and daughter, was pacing his library during a storm one night, when he stopped to gaze at himself in the mirror. 'I wonder,' he said in disgust, addressing himself to his image, 'What you look like to other people.' At that moment the room became full of living flame, the skies reverberated with thunder. As the flame cleared away, the room appeared to have not been damaged. But there was one change. Jeremy's reflection in the mirror had stepped outside.".

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good in Dust Jacket. * (illustrator). First American Edition. Octavo, original blue cloth titled in gilt on spine & front panel. [308] pp + [1] pp ads at rear. The correct first printing, with the code (1) at the end of the final leaf of text. Small ink inscription on front free endpaper, dated 1931; corners bumped, a very good copy in the original two-colour printed dust jacket, which is lightly worn at the edges, a bit tanned on the spine panel and has the price on the flap inked out. Overall, quite a decent copy of a scarce book. Fantasy novel. A man's double - his doppleganger - appears from out of a mirror. The basis for the 1936 British film starring Edward Everett Horton.

Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v [vi-viii] [1] 2-310 [311-312: ads], original sage green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First edition. An obscure doppelganger fantasy from an author better known for his mysteries. The protagonist is a middle class man of a type so dear to inter-war English novelists, his complacent life like a small unarmed country just begging for an invasion by the extraordinary. One stormy night, after a stressful day at the brokerage and a false accusation of philandering, Jeremy Dilkes sees the mirror in his study explode and from it emerge his double. Comic and near-tragic complications ensue. The double represents Dilke's id, his unrestrained animal spirits, the opposite of Jeremy's usual cautious milquetoast self. Jeremy tries for a while to coexist with this double but events push him to a desperate solution. The novel, finally, frustrates our hopes that it will go off into any one of the truly adventurous directions it keeps verging on. It meanders from breezy bedroom farce to occult thriller to murder mystery to highbrow academic wit (including the conceit that Garrett is writing a biography, not a novel), without synthesizing these ingredients or dedicating itself consistently and deeply to just one tone. Its psychological underpinnings seem a bit creaky today. Nevertheless, this is a sophisticated and not inconsiderable effort that deserves to be better known. A worthy addition to the literature of split personality and doppelgangers that has crystallized around Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bleiler (1978), p. 80. Reginald 05813. Spine panel faded and lightly foxed, early gift inscription on front free endpaper, a very good copy. (#75370).