ANGELS AND INSECTS (First edition, first impression)

First impression of the true first edition. The dustwrapper painting is by Norman Adams. ***Very good in dark-red cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The boards are clean and unmarked. No creases or bumps, even to the spine ends and corners which are sharp. Top edge of text-block stained red by the publisher - still a nice deep colour and clean. Page block edges clean but tanned. Very slight reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Internally also very good with no inscriptions. No creases or tears, but please note that there is slight splitting to the paper at the gutter of the title page (please see scans). With an integral red satin reading ribbon. Paper stock lightly tanned as usual. No foxing. Pages clean. ***In a near fine colour-illustrated dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's price of £14.99 net. The dustwrapper is virtually flawless, with no creases, chips or tears. Virtually no fading to the sun-sensitive colours on the spine. Dustwrapper bright and clean. ***242mm x 160mm. 292 pages including Acknowledgements page at the back of the book. ***'Angels and Insects (sometimes styled as Angels & Insects) was filmed in 1995, directed by Philip Haas and starring Mark Rylance, Patsy Kensit, and Kristin Scott Thomas. It was written by Philip and Belinda Haas with A. S. Byatt after her 1992 novella Morpho Eugenia (included in her book Angels and Insects).' (Wiki) ***'These two fascinating novellas, like A. S. Byatt's Booker prize winning novel "Possession", are set in the mid-nineteenth century, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance. "Morpho Eugenia" is a lively Gothic fable of the Earthly Paradise, of the Victorian obsession with Darwinian theories of breeding and sexuality and the parallels between insect and human society - the capture and taming of nature, whether it be a young woman in a country house or a rare butterfly, gleaming in the forests of the amazon. "The Conjugal Angel" concerns Tennyson's "In Memoriam", published in 1850, mourning the death seventeen years before of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who was engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. A philosophical ghost-story, bizarre, comic and moving, in which fictive mediums meet "real" characters, it explores the contemporary preoccupation with God and life after death.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***A first impression of the true first edition. ***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.…