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First impression of the true first edition. SIGNED by the author on the title-page in black fibre-tip pen: 'Doris Lessing'. Illustrated with black and white photographs including full-page frontispiece showing: 'Doris Lessing, 1955'. ***Very good in burgundy cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine. Burgundy front and rear free endpapers and pastedowns. Edges of boards slightly rubbed. Very slight foxing to fore-edge of text-block. Paper slightly tanned, otherwise pages clean. Spine tight. ***In a near fine colour illustrated dustwrapper showing original publisher's price of £20.00. Tiny nick to tail of spine of dustwrapper. The slightest hint of fading to spine of dustwrapper. Rear and front panels of dustwrapper bright. ***369 pages. 242 mm x 156 mm. ***'In Walking in the Shade, scenes of her childhood and adolescence, and the struggles with her family, are replaced by those of post-war London - bomb-damaged, food-rationed, utility-dressed, cold, dark London - and the battles, both personal and political, of the 1950s. ***Doris Lessing arrived in England in 1949, with a small child, £150 and the manuscript of The Grass is Singing. It found publishers in Britain, Europe and America, and its success was almost immediate. Doris Lessing was soon recognised as one of the most important new writers of the hopeful, post-war generation. She worked in what would now be considered nearly impossible circumstances - always poor (the general condition of the times), living in lodgings, and above all, consumed by the difficulties of being what is now called a single mother. ***Walking in the Shade describes how communism dominated the intellectual life of the 1950s, and the re-creation of that cast of mind, with all its idealism and sense of responsibility for the world, is perhaps the book's most striking achievement. Doris Lessing is open and frank about her involvement with communism, and attempts to explain why a whole generation of some of the most humane and socially-concerned people embraced and excused the horrors of the Soviet Union: her explanation is not flattering, but credible. ***Doris Lessing's personal progress away from post-war deprivation, her growing reputation as a writer, and her increasing earning, were part of a general ascent. Europe made the extraordinary leap into optimism and affluence: the heavy depression of the war atmosphere had gone and London was full of the new youth. She was one of the Angry Young Men. ***The book ends in 1962, with the writing of The Golden Notebook, about whose genesis she writes informatively and unexpectedly and at length.' (Quote from inside front and rear jacket blurb). ***First impression of the true first edition, signed by the author, in its original dustwrapper in very nice collectable 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. Seller Inventory # 6820
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Bibliographic Details
Title: WALKING IN THE SHADE: Volume Two of My ...
Publisher: Harper Collins, London
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: First Edition
