OFFSHORE (First edition - third printing - Booker prize winner)

A third printing of the true first edition of this Booker prize-winning novel. The book was first published in 1979, and was rapidly reprinted when the book won the Booker Prize. ***Very good in grey cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The boards are clean with just a small black mark on the spine. Corners sharp. Head and tail of spine slightly creased. Page-block edges foxed - mainly to the top edge. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Internally also very good with no inscriptions. Interior pages clean with just a very few fox spots to some outer margins. No creases or tears. ***In a very good colour-illustrated dustwrapper, which has been price-clipped by the publisher, with a new publisher's printed sticker at £4.95 net. The dustwrapper is complete with no tears or chips, just some light rubbing and creasing to the edges. Slight fading to the sun-sensitive colour on the spine of the dustwrapper, but less than is usually found. There is some foxing to the interior of the dustwrapper. (please see scans). ***216mm x142mm. 141 pages. ***'Penelope Fitzgerald is best known for her family biography "The Knox Brothers", which had the rare distinction of winning unanimous praise from the critics and pleasing a wide readership. Last year her first novel "The Bookshop" was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her new novel is set in the 1960s, among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither. Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can't get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore and in the not altogether savoury streets that fringe the river. She feels drawn to Richard, the correct ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominated the Reach. Richard can make things work. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? The novel puts this question, and other ones about truth and kindness'. (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***Penelope Fitzgerald was born Penelope Mary Knox at the Old Bishop's Palace, Lincoln, the daughter of Edmund Knox, later editor of Punch, and Christina Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, the Bishop of Lincoln, and she was one of the first women students at Oxford. (Wiki) ***A third printing of the true first edition, complete in its original dustwrapper. The Booker Prize winner for 1979. A popular Booker winning novel. ***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.…