About this Item
First printing of this slim volume of poetry by Joyce Cary, containing a single long poem on the nature of war, published in 1945. ***Near fine in light-brown cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the front board. The boards are clean and unmarked, and the gilt is still beautifully bright, without any fading whatsoever. No tears or creasing to the cloth. Corners sharp. Page block edges also clean. No reading lean to the fragile binding. Spine tight. Internally also near fine, with no inscriptions or annotations - just a loosely inserted note on handmade paper with a nice hand-drawn illustration (please see scans). Pages clean. the wartime paper stock used is very thin, but there are no creases or tears to the pages. No marks. No foxing.
***In a very good original printed dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of 2/6 at the bottom corner of the front flap, lightly crossed out in pencil. The dustwrapper is virtually complete, with just slight loss at the head of the spine. The fragile dustwrapper is also slightly rubbed, nicked and creased at the extremities. The corner tips are also slightly worn, but there are no major faults. Spine of dustwrapper clean without any fading. Dustwrapper bright. ***28 pages. 188mm x 130mm.
***'No one who has read Joyce Cary's novels can have failed to remark that behind the brilliant, sardonic narrative lies a tender and rather agonized apprehension of the human soul and its strange adventures in this world. This long poem crystallizes his sense of the tragedy of war, as well as the unaccountable fact that the discipline employed makes heroes out of very ordinary men and women.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper)
***'Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary (7 Dec 1888 - 29 Mar 1957), known as Joyce Cary, was an Anglo-Irish novelist and colonial official. His most notable novels include "Mister Johnson" and "The Horse's Mouth". Cary was born into an old Anglo-Irish family, and at age 16 he studied painting in Edinburgh and then in Paris. From 1909 to 1912 he was at Trinity College, Oxford, where he read law. Having joined the colonial service in 1914, he served in the Nigeria Regiment during World War I. He was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. West Africa became the locale of his early novels. Resolved to become a writer, Cary settled in Oxford in 1920. Although that year he published 10 short stories in the Saturday Evening Post, an American magazine, he decided he knew too little about philosophy, ethics, and history to continue writing in good conscience. Study occupied the next several years, and it was only in 1932 that his first novel, "Aissa Saved", appeared. The story of an African girl converted to Christianity but still retaining pagan elements in her faith, it was followed by three more African novels? "An American Visitor" (1933), "The African Witch" (1936), and "Mister Johnson" (1939) ? and a novel about the decline of the British Empire, "Castle Corner" (1938). Childhood was the theme of his next two novels: his own in "A House of Children" (1941) and that of a cockney wartime evacuee in the country in "Charley Is My Darling" (1940). Cary?s trilogy on art begins with the first-person narration of a woman, Sara Monday, in "Herself Surprised" (1941) and follows with that of two men in her life, the lawyer Tom Wilcher in "To Be a Pilgrim" (1942) and the artist Gulley Jimson in "The Horse?s Mouth" (1944), his best-known novel.' (Wiki)
***First printing of this slim volume of poetry by Joyce Cary, containing a single long poem on the nature of war, published in 1945. ***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.
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