An Elderly Retired Man

FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. 8vo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Small mark to heel of spine. Inscribed in black pen to ffep: "For dear Irene Rathbone, Kathleen Nott, October 1963," occasional pencil scoring and a few, brief notes in Rathbone's hand. Clipped TLS review laid in: toned, title and date added in Rathbone's hand. In the original black, white and red dust jacket: spine darkened, toned and gently soiled, a few marks to front panel, some creasing and nicking to edges. Very good/ very good A lovely copy of the unusual first edition of Kathleen Nott's "exquisitely intelligent" final novel, in which a retired civil servant looks back on his life, inscribed in the publication year to her friend and fellow British novelist, Irene Rathbone; it also features an affectionate printed dedication, "To Margaret Storm Jameson, in love and admiration". As with most of her books, Rathbone's engagement is evident in her light pencil scoring and occasional notes (a light touch for her). Alongside Rathbone and Jameson (who had been the first female President of its English branch, 1938-1944), Kathleen Nott (1905-1999) was involved in PEN, editing its magazine, Pen International, for 28 years. On her retirement from the organisation, Francis King described her as "a poet sadly underrated by those swept hither and thither on choppy tides of fashion, a prose writer who combines vigour with self-discipline, and a philosopher with a rare gift for exegesis not only of her own ideas but of the ideas of others." Indeed, if known today, it is likely for her lacerating The Emperor's Clothes: An attack on the dogmatic orthodoxy of T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, and others (1953). A Humanist, Nott was President of the Progressive League (1959–1961).…