A SORT OF LIFE (First edition - second printing)

Second printing of the true first edition - with the corrected state of text reading 'J. M. Barrie' instead of 'Sir John Barrie' on p.177, line 4. Dustwrapper designed by Michael Harvey. ***Near fine in forest-green cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The gilt is still beautifully bright. Boards clean and unmarked. Head and tail of spine just slightly creased. Corners sharp. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Page block edges nice and clean - the top edge sprayed mauve by the publisher to match the dustwrapper (now faded). Internally also near fine with no inscriptions. No foxing. Pages clean. No creases or tears. ***In a near fine colour-printed dustwrapper, which has not been corner price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of £1.80 net. The dustwrapper is complete with no discernible faults. No creases, chips or tears. No fading, even to the spine. Dustwrapper bright. ***203mm x 135mm. 216 pages. ***'Graham Greene writes: "An autobiography is only 'a sort of life' - it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely. If one cannot close a book of memories on the deathbed, any conclusion must be arbitrary, and I have preferred to finish this essay with the years of failure which followed the acceptance of my first novel. In another sense too a book like this can only b e ' a sort of life', for in the course of sixty-six years I have spent almost as much time with imaginary characters as with real men and women. There is a fashion today among many of my contemporaries to treat the events of their past with irony. It is a legitimate method of self-defence. 'Look how absurd I was when I was young' forestalls cruel criticism, but it falsifies history. We were not Eminent Georgians. Those emotions were real when we felt them. Why should we be more ashamed of them than of the indifference of old age? I have tried, however unsuccessfully, to live again the follies and sentimentalities and exaggerations of the distant time, and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony.' (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***Second printing of the true first edition, complete in its original dustwrapper, in very nice near fine condition. Not an uncommon book, but hard to find now in such nice 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.…