Misted Mirror by Daniel Rops (6 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Good dj. First American Edition. [light external soiling and a bit of wear to extremities; jacket has several small chips along top and bottom edges, browned at spine, several tears that are internally tape-repaired]. Novel about a young man and his travails as part of that generation in France who came of age in the decade following World War I -- a "generation which, not old enough by a few years to have taken part in the War, suffered all the spiritual, mental and moral strain of that time." The New York Times critic was unimpressed, likening its protagonist to Julien Sorel (of "The Red and the Black"), deriding him as "one of those thin, dark-eyed, sensitive young men who have been the recurrent concern of French novelists since Stendahl." The book itself, he stated, was "hesitant and groping. There is no plot. There are merely a series of incidents, [which] all go to show the culmination of doubt and spiritual distress in his heart." This was the author's first novel, published in France in 1928 as "L'âme obscure" (which translates as "The Dark Soul"); he had begun his literary career with a 1926 essay entitled "Notre inquiétude" ("Our Anxiety"), which took as its theme "humanity's loss of meaning and direction in an increasingly industrialized and mechanized world" (Wikipedia). Raised a Roman Catholic, he had returned to the religion after a period of agnosticism in the 1920s, and from the early 1930s onward most of his writings concerned Catholicism.

8vo. pp 324. Original publisher's grey cloth, lettered black on white spine label. Ownership signature of Roger Senhouse on the front endpaper - an English publisher and translator and very close friend of Lytton Strachey, a Secker executive. Faint rubbing, otherwise very good.

(MOTTRAM, R.H.). DANIEL-ROPS, Henry. Misted Mirror. Translated from the French With a Preface by R.H. Mottram. Orig. cloth with paper spine label, dust jacket (faded, worn and soiled). London: Martin Secker, 1930. First edition. A fine copy. Scarce.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First edition in English. Translated with a preface by R. H. Mottram. A near fine copy with a small bump at tip of one corner in near fine dust jacket is evenly toned and slightly rubbed on the spine. An elusive title in dust jacket.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition. Jacket by John Austen which is somewhat browned and nicked around the edges. One small repair to the verso. Light foxing to the prelims. Size: Octavo (standard book size). Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilo. Category: Fiction; Inventory No: 78577.

First Edition. John Austen dustjacket art. Author's first novel, "a most searching and fearless exposition of the generation which, not old enough by a short period to share in the War, suffered all the spiritual, mental and moral strain of those years". Near Fine in Very Good dustjacket.