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First impression of the true first edition, published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in March 1938 - with the first state attractive pictorial dustwrapper designed by R. Medley. With a photographic portrait frontispiece showing the author entitled 'Myself, in 1921'. A total of 3,580 copies were printed, but some of these were bound up in the second-state with gilt tiles to the spine of the book and a plain printed Hogarth Crown Library dustwrapper. (Woolmer 431) ***Very good in blue cloth-covered boards with black titles to the spine. The boards are clean, but there is a small patch of fading on the back board. Head and tail of spine slightly creased, with some slight patchy fading to the spine. Corners slightly rubbed but not bumped. Binding square with no reading lean. Spine tight. Page block edges clean without any of the usual foxing. Internally also very good with a contemporaneous owner's name and date in pencil to the top of the front free endpaper: J. R. Whitehead, April 1941'. The interior pages are very clean, with just small areas of very sporadic light foxing. No creases or tears. ***In a very good grey dustwrapper, illustrated in dark-brown, with the publisher's price of 7/6 net printed on the spine. The dustwrapper is complete, with just some light rubbing and wear to the edges, mainly at the top and tail of the spine. No serious creases or tears, but please note that there is some splitting along the folds of the spine which have been neatly reinforced with tape on the reverse. Spine of dustwrapper slightly discoloured and browned. Dustwrapper otherwise bright. ***188mm x 130mm. 312 pages. ***'This new book, by the author of "Mr. Norris Changes Trains", is part autobiography, part fiction: it attempts to describe the life of a typical young writer of the twenties, his problems, his aims, his ideas. Beginning at a public school, it goes on to Cambridge, where Mr. Isherwood and his friend "Chalmers" inhabited the fantastic world of "Mortmere." There are reminiscences of the London musical bohemia, of tutoring in expensive houses, of the author's brief career as a medical student. Many of Mr. Isherwood's colleagues and personal friends appear, sometimes under thin disguises which the reader-detective will, no doubt, find easy to penetrate. The title, "Lions and Shadows", is also that of Mr. Isherwood's first and never-to-be-published novel.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***'Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 - 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include "Goodbye to Berlin" (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); "A Single Man" (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and "Christopher and His Kind" (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement"'. At Repton, his boarding school in Derbyshire, Isherwood met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he invented an imaginary English village called Mortmere, as related in his fictional autobiography, "Lions and Shadows" (1938). He went up to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a history scholar, wrote jokes and limericks on his second year Tripos and was asked to leave without a degree in 1925. (Wiki) ***A first impression of the true first edition, published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in March 1938 - with the first state attractive pictorial dustwrapper designed by R. Medley, rare to find in the original fragile pre-war dustwrapper. Of interest to collectors of the works of Christopher Isherwood, the Bloomsbury Group and The Hogarth Press. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Seller Inventory # 8673
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