WORLD WITHIN WORLD (First Faber Library edition - with a new introduction by the author)

Stephen Spender

ISBN 10: 0571191185 / ISBN 13: 9780571191185

Published by Faber & Faber, 3 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AU, 1997

About this Item

A first impression of the new Faber Library edition (No. 21) - with a new 12 page introduction written by the author in 1994, the year before his death.

***Near fine in light-grey cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The gilt is still beautifully bright. Boards clean and unmarked. No bumps. No tears to the cloth. Corners sharp. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Edges of page block just very slightly foxed. Internally also near fine, with no previous ownership marks. No foxing. Pages clean. No tears or creases.

***In a very good plain printed dustwrapper, which is unpriced. The dustwrapper is complete, with no significant faults. No creases, chips or tears. Some fading to the spine colour, and some light marks to the pale yellow colour. There is also a shadow of a now-removed price sticker on the front panel (please see scans). ***325 pages. 204mm x 135mm.

***"A very important book; an outstanding clear and courageous statement of certain personal and social problems which concern all of us --- An extremely lively, moving and amusing autobiography -- full of profound delight in human experience." - Christopher Isherwood (Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper). ***"Admirable as a portrait of an age, and fascinating as an autobiography." -- Cyril Connolly (Quote taken from the front panel).

***A first printing of the new Faber Library edition (No. 21). ***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 # 9642

Bibliographic Details

• Title: WORLD WITHIN WORLD (First Faber Library edition - with a new introduction by the author)
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, 3 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AU
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571191185
• ISBN 13: 9780571191185
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Thus
• Printing: First Impression
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • First Editions

About this title

Synopsis

While Spender's brilliant autobiography, first published in 1951 and out of print for 12 years, has gained new prominence as a result of its thematic appropriation by David Leavitt in While England Sleeps, the work remains a powerful classic in its own right, recognized as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to have emerged from the 1920s and 1930s.

From the Inside Flap

"In this book I am mainly concerned with a few themes: love; poetry; politics; the life of literature....I believe obstinately that, if I am able to write with truth about what has happened to me, this can help others....In this belief I have risked being indiscreet, and I have written occasionally of experiences which seem strange to me myself, and which I have not seen discussed else-where." So begins Stephen Spender's autobiography, widely acclaimed as the twentieth century's greatest memoir.

Spender was one of his generation's most celebrated poets, a writer living at the intersection of literature and politics in Europe between the two world wars. His portraits of his friends?Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden,
W. B. Yeats, and Christopher Isherwood?render a romantic world of literary genius. Spender uses a poet's language to create an honest and tender exploration of amity and the many possibilities of love. First published in 1951, World Within World simultaneously shocked and bedazzled the literary establishment for its frank discussion of Eros in the modern world.

Out of print for several years, this Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the critic John Bayley and an Afterword Spender wrote in 1994 describing his reaction to the charges that David Leavitt plagiarized this autobiography in a novel.