THE DRAGON IN SHALLOW WATERS (First edition - third impression)

Third impression of the true first edition, published in the Collins' 2/6 novels series in July 1923. The first impression was published in May 1921, with a second impression following in July 1921. All these early impressions are scarce. ***Very good in red cloth-covered boards with black titles to the spine and front board. Edges of boards slightly rubbed, with very slight loss to the cloth at the head of the spine. Corners of boards rubbed and slightly bumped. Head and tail of spine rubbed and creased. Very slight splitting to the fragile cloth at the bottom of the spine. The boards are clean and unmarked. The spine is slightly faded. No reading lean to the binding. Top edge of page block darkened, but no foxing to the page block. Internally there is hardly any foxing, just light offsetting to the endpapers. With a contemporary inscription in old fountain-pen ink 'Edward J. O'Brien, August 17, 1925. Walton-on-the-Naze' and another more recent ink name on the front free endpaper. Interior pages clean. Spine tight. No dustwrapper. ***190mm x 125mm. 254 pages plus five pages of publisher's adverts at the back of the book. ***'An immense gallery, five hundred feet long, occupied the upper floor of the main factory-building. Looking down the gallery, a perspective of iron girders spanned the roof, gaunt skeletons of architecture, uncompromising, inexorably utilitarian, inflexible, remorseless. A drone of machinery filled the air, neither very loud nor very near at hand, but softly and unremittingly continuous; the drone of clanking, of loosely-running wheels and leather belts, muffled by the intervening floor into a not unpleasant murmur. Outside the windows three chimneys reared their heads side by side, emitting three parallel streams of smoke, gigantic black plumes that floated horizontally away over the flooded country, and that at night were flecked with red sparks as they flowed out from the red glare at their base.' [Vita's poetic description of a factory that starts the novel] ***'Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 - 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer. Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels during her life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her friend and lover Virginia Woolf. She wrote a column in The Observer from 1946 to 1961 and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson. (Wiki) ***A third impression of the true first edition, published in July 1923. This was Vita Sackville-West's second novel, and all pre-war printings are very scarce now. ***Of interest to collectors of Vita Sackville-West, the Bloomsbury Group and the Hogarth Press first edition titles. ***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. …