The Summer Before the Dark

Doris Lessing

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1973

About this Item

A fine copy, in a fine dust jacket, of the stated first US edition. The black cloth binding is clean and unworn, with strong gilt lettering to the spine. Everything is square and tight, with sharp unbumped edges and corners. Inside there are no ownership inscriptions or other markings of any kind. The dust jacket is unclipped ($6.95), and fully intact with no discernible edgewear. It is now protected in a removable mylar cover. "Doris Lessing was born on 22 October 1919 to British parents in Kermanshah in what was then known as Persia (now Iran) as Doris May Taylor. Her father, Alfred Cook Taylor, formerly a captain in the British army during the First World War, was a bank official. Her mother, Emily Maude Taylor, had been a nurse. In 1925 the family moved to a farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) hoping to improve their income. Lessing described her childhood on the farm in the first part of her autobiography, Under My Skin (1994). At the age of seven, she was sent to a convent boarding school but later moved to a girls' school in Salisbury. When 14 she independently ended her formal schooling. In the following years she worked as a young nanny, telephonist, office worker, stenographer and journalist and had several short stories published. In 1939 she married Frank Charles Wisdom with whom she had a son, John, and a daughter, Jean. The couple divorced in 1943. In 1945 Doris married Gottfried Lessing, a German-Jewish immigrant she had met in a Marxist group mainly concerned with the race issue. She became involved with the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party. She and Gottfried had a son, Peter. When the couple divorced in 1949, she took Peter and moved to London, quickly establishing herself as a writer. Between 1952 and 1956 she was a member of the British Communist Party and was active in the campaign against nuclear weapons. Because of her criticism of the South African regime, she was prohibited entry to that country between 1956 and 1995. After a brief visit to Southern Rhodesia in 1956, she was banned there as well for the same reason. In African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (1992) she described going back in 1982 to the country where she had grown up. She now lives in London". (Nobel Prize Site). Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Seller Inventory # NT000650

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Summer Before the Dark

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Publication Date: 1973

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Edition: 1st Edition.