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First impression of the true first edition. ***Very good in dark blue cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine. The boards are clean and unmarked. Head and tail of spine slightly rubbed. No bumps or creases. No reading lean to the binding. Page block edges slightly foxed, with darkening to the top edge. Internally also very good, with the original owner's name in ink pen: 'Kate Flint' to the front free endpaper. No internal foxing. Pages clean. No creases or tears. ***In a very good typical Gollancz-style yellow dustwrapper, printed in black with mauve lining, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of 12/6 net on the front flap. The dustwrapper is largely complete, with just a small area of loss at the top of the spine, and rubbing and slight loss to the corner tips of the dustwrapper. Edges of dustwrapper slightly creased and rubbed. Spine of dustwrapper clean with hardly any of the usual browning. Dustwrapper bright. ***256 pages. 192mm x 130mm. ***Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) wrote her novels at the same time as Virginia Woolf. In her diary, Virginia Woolf wrote that Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing was far superior to her own in its expressions of truth, and in its originality. Ivy Compton Burnett's own tragic experiences of family life provided some of the material she drew on as a novelist. Her books are about money, power, status, incest, adultery, murder, homosexuality, about which she was years ahead of her time, and all the passions and stresses of family life, described with brilliant wit and perception. ***Apart from her first novel, "Dolores", her novels involve psychological exploration of small-scale power-abuse and persecution, human weaknesses, dysfunctional families and their internal power struggles in large Edwardian houses. Her fiction revolves around dialogue, sometimes epigrammatic. Important information can be subtle, stated by a character in a half-sentence. Her use of punctuation is minimal: no colons or semi-colons, no exclamation marks or italics; this is deliberate, and helps to create the unique claustrophobic literary fictional world of Ivy Compton-Burnett. (Wiki) ***"Her novels are conceived on the same moral and intellectual level as those of Henry James." -' Edward Sackville-West in Horizon (Review quote taken from the front panel of "A House and Its Head") ***First impression of the true first edition, in its original 1950s dustwrapper in very nice original condition. ***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. Seller Inventory # 9069
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