VISIONS OF CODY (First UK edition - ex-library reading copy)

First impression of the first UK edition, published in 1973. The book was originally published the previous year in the USA by McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. With a six-page Introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Dustwrapper design by Len Payne. ***PLEASE NOTE - this is a good ex-library reading copy. ***A good copy in pink cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The boards are clean and unmarked, but there are a couple of short splits to the cloth at the top of the spine (please see scans). Extremities of boards just slightly rubbed. Head and tail of spine creased. Page block edges quite foxed and browned. Light vertical reading crease to the spine, but no reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. There is a white Dewey library number at the bottom of the spine. Internally also good, but please note the following library marks: Command Lending Library HQ BAOR [stands for British Army On the Rhine] stamp to the front pastedown, remains of lending sheet on the front free endpaper, another small ink stamp on the printer's page. Interior pages quite clean, but a few handling marks as expected. No serious creases or tears - just some light creases tom a few pages (please see scans). ***In a very good colour-printed dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of £2.95 net. The dustwrapper is complete with no chips or tears, and is actually very well preserved (having been protected by a library sleeve - now removed and replaced with a thin protective acetate cover). Some browning at the edges, particularly at the top corners. Head of spine and edges of dustwrapper very slightly rubbed and creased. Back panel of dustwrapper extremely clean (being a white background). Spine and front panel of dustwrapper bright. ***398 pages. 240mm x 160mm. ***'"This major novel by the late Jack Kerouac, written 1951-2, is one of his most important works. Never before published in its entirety, it has become, over the years, an underground legend. Here is the America of the late forties and early fifties that Kerouac knew so well and celebrated so magnificently -- the irresistible lure of the cross-country highways feverishly travelled by Jack Duluoz, the narrator of this book, and Cody Pomeray; the loneliness of diners and cafeterias and cheap hotels and 42nd street bars; the small towns passed through quickly, evoking boyhood memories; the all-night wine-drinking and pot-smoking sessions, where the music was Billie Holliday and Lester Young and Charlie Parker -- all this sense of superabundant reality informed by the knowledge of mortality: "I'm writing this book because we're all going to die --- my heart broke in the general despair and opened up inward to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream." Here are the members of the Beat Generation as they were in the years before any label had been affixed to them. They were the precursors of the new consciousness that flowered in the late sixties. It was in Cody, with his raw energy, his endless thirst for experience, that Kerouac found his great American hero. And it was Cody who inspired some of his most memorable and poetic writing. (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper) ***First impression of the first UK edition of "Visions of Cody", in the dustwrapper. A good reading copy, albeit being an ex-library example. ***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.…