About this Item
Scarce SIGNED and dated publisher's review copy of the first impression of the first American edition, with "First printing" stated on the printer's page, as called for. Signed and dated by the author in black pen to the title-page: 'Janet Frame Jan 1970.' With an original printed and typed publisher's review slip 'publication date July 11, 1960' loosely enclosed in an original protective thin black card folder, and a contemporaneous author's photo also loosely enclosed in an original protective thin black card folder. Jacket design by Ati Forberg. ***Near fine in orange cloth-covered boards with silver titles to the spine. Top edge of page block stained red by the publisher. Head and tail of spine slightly creased. Edges of boards slightly rubbed. The boards are also slightly warped. Fore-edge of text-block sporadically foxed. Internally also near fine with no inscriptions (other than the author's) and clean pages. No creases or tears. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. ***In a near fine colour-illustrated price-clipped dustwrapper. Extremities of dustwrapper very slightly rubbed and creased. Back panel of dustwrapper slightly rubbed, marked and discoloured (being a white background). Bottom edge of back panel of dustwrapper slightly creased, rubbed and nicked. No fading to the spine or front panel of the dustwrapper. Colours to the dustwrapper bright. ***214mm x 144mm. 211 pages. ***'In New Zealand, where it was originally published, "Owls Do Cry" has been hailed as the first important novel to emerge in that country. The American reader, moved by the beauty of Janet Frame's vision, which is nothing less than poetry, cannot fail to be impressed by Miss Frame's talent. Surely it is the mark of an extraordinary gift "to find heaven in a grain of sand", to confront, as Miss Frame does, the harshest and most meager of realities with so much understanding and compassion. ***For Francie, Daphne, Toby and Chicks, the four children of a poverty-haunted family in southern New Zealand, the source of the world's treasure - of all illusion and promise - is the rubbish dump on the edge of town. How this charmed and malignant place ensnares and dooms them, each in turn, is the theme of this remarkable novel. The story charts the fate, the inner odyssey as well as the outer, of each of the children. In the end, the seemingly most hopelessly lost of the four is able to find a place in the real world, while the others sink under the spell that binds them. Here is the eternal legend of dream and betrayal, but conceived with so individual a vision that it defies conventional literary comparisons. With uncanny precision, Miss Frame exposes the mysterious subterranean currents which link brother to sister, new generations to old, and ultimately, the essential child to the adult in each of us. And girdling the story, like the seas lapping that island continent, is the New Zealand setting, the sharp contrasts of climate and landscape, beauty and ugliness, and the shape and sound of the small town in which the Withers family lives, a town at once highly particular and universal. ***The style throughout is trenchant, the insights piercing. It is obvious, as one critic pointed out, that "nobody ever taught Janet Frame to see things as she does, any more than William Blake was taught. When she writes what she sees straight out of her imagination, she has something of Blake's innocence and splendour. [Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper] ***A first impression of the US first edition - rare to find signed and dated by the author, and especially so with the original George Braziller publisher's review slip and author's photograph loosely inserted to the fore - complete in its original dustwrapper in extremely nice collectable condition. A unique copy of Janet Frame's first published novel. A collector's item. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging.
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