Winifred Lear (10 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. hbk 224pp dj has a closed tear mended with transparent tape now in protective sleeve small obliteration on fep otherwise an excellent clean tight unmarked ext.

Condition: Good. Light wear to boards. Content is clean with minor age tone. Owner name to end paper. Good DJ with some edge wear, fading to spine and creasing.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Hard cover stated first printing of 347 pages, internally very fine, tight, bright, and clean, free of writings. The dark blue cloth cover has wear at the spine ends, extremities and along the edges. Book is good minus, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition. Ex library hardback: dj is stained on the edges, spine is faded and has a library number 'whited' out, front flap creased, rear flap trimmed, black brds, covers are slightly marked, usual library markings, some foredge foxing and a few internal marks, else g. tall 8vo, 224pp. At the age of seven Winifred disappears to a wonderland of an unusual Private School. An account of middle-class home and school life during and after the first World War.…

Hardcover. Condition: USED Good. No Jacket. First Edition. Stated First Printing. Clean, tight and square. Corners are bumped, covers lightly scuffed.

Cloth. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good Plus. This is a nice classic fiction novel called Shady Cloister, copyright 1950, possible first edition with no other date found, hard cover, dust jacket, written by Winifred Lear. The books dust jacket has a small scuff on front cover, some small tears and chips, otherwise in good plus condition in a new archival mylar wrap. The book itself has minor wear and in very good condition with tight binding, nice gilt lettering on cover spine, clean and 272 pages. Size: 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.…

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First edition, first printing - both book and dj are near fine or fine -.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Fair dj. First Edition. [moderate shelfwear, with paper-covered boards slightly rubbed through along the bottom edges, slight bumping to upper corners, old bookseller's rubber-stamped name (Bertrand Smith Acres of Books, Long Beach, California) at lower corner of front pastedown; the jacket is edgeworn with various small nicks and tears, light soiling, and the spine faded to unreadability]. Described in the jacket blurb as "a witty satire of modern English life," this novel (the author's first) is set in London during the late 1930s and into the early years of World War II. (The period that includes the blitz takes up only about the last one-sixth of the book.) The main character is Davina, the 36-year-old unmarried daughter of a rector, who is involved in a deeply-felt but non-sexual romance with a young man of twenty-one, and at the same time is the object of frustrated affection from another guy (also younger than she but not by so much), a schoolmaster who is a paying guest in the rectory. There are a variety of eccentric figures in the book (including a yoga-practicing vegetarian maiden aunt), none more so than the rector himself, who prior to the beginning of the story had suffered a stroke that had radically altered his personality, changing him from a gentle, pious and beloved cleric into what one contemporary reviewer of the book called "a sadistic, obscene old monster, liable to flare into murderous rage over nothing." The author was co-principal of a school in Birkdale, in northwest England, from 1948 to 1971, and subsequently wrote several other several other novels, all of which seem to have been drawn on her professional experience; the last was "Those Peculiar Things," published in 1991.…

Hardcover. First Edition; First Printing. Near Fine in a Very Good+ dust jacket. Aged adhesive on front panel.

hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Publication: London, Macmillan, 1974 Formatting: 8vo, pp. [viii], 224. Condition Report: Very Good. The ochre printed wrappers exhibit standard shelf-wear for a pre-publication item of this vintage, including a minuscule chip and a very short closed tear at the head of the spine, alongside faint handling marks to the rear panel and slight rubbing to the extremities. The binding remains firm and square, with no discernible leaning or splitting to the text block. Internally, the pages are bright and largely clean, save for an isolated spot of rust offsetting/foxing to the preliminary leaf and gentle dust-soiling along the text block edges. Despite these signs of average wear, the book remains fully intact with all pages present, representing a highly respectable example of a fragile format. Catalogue Note: This is an uncorrected proof copy of Winifred Lear's memoir, issued by Macmillan prior to the book's first general publication. Bound in the traditional printed paper wrappers denoting its status, expressly marked "Not For Resale," this copy was distributed to early readers, reviewers, or booksellers ahead of the finalised commercial release. While standard first editions of Down the Rabbit Hole occasionally surface on the secondary market, uncorrected proofs of Lear's later work are distinctly scarce, offering an authentic glimpse into the mid-century British publishing process. Down the Rabbit Hole offers a humorous and perceptive account of Winifred Lear's experiences growing up in a middle-class English family and attending a remarkably unorthodox private school around the time of the First World War. Balancing domestic comedy with moments of deeper psychological resonance, Lear chronicles her childhood interactions with siblings, school friends, eccentric staff, and the occasional adversary. The narrative weaves an authentic, charming, and occasionally stark portrait of early 20th-century home and school life, cementing her reputation as a witty and deeply observant chronicler of middle-class English society. N/A (illustrator).…