LAWRENCE DURRELL FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. “As for sport (said Antrobus), the very word makes me uneasy. I’ve never believed in its healing power. Once I was forced to referee a match between H.M.S. Threadbare and the French Fleet which resulted in my nearly being dismembered”. Ten Antrobus tales of diplomatic life, each neatly captured in a full-page Nicolas Bentley illustration.
Post 8vo (21cm). 94,[ii]pp. Illustrations and decorative chapter headings by Bentley. Original turquoise cloth, lettered in yellow; a single tiny edge-spot, but otherwise a very good, clean and sound copy in the Bentley dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£75

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London : Faber & Faber, (1958). First edition. The second volume in the Alexandria Quartet – “Balthazar’s merciless ‘Interlinear’ to the love-story of Justine”.
Post 8vo (22cm). 250,(iv)pp. Original blue cloth blocked in red and gilt; a touch dulled, with some mild wear; a handful of spots to edges and endpapers, but a good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket with a couple of tiny nicks and some slight marking to the lower panel.

SOLD

London : Faber & Faber, 1960. First edition. The fourth and the final instalment of the Alexandria Quartet – Darley returns to an Alexandria at war. “As well as being a rounding-off and, in many ways, an explanation of the previous three books, ‘Clea’ is also a work on its own ... different, perhaps less subtle but, on the whole more moving” (The Sphere, 6th February 1960). One of the most memorable and extraordinary performances in twentieth-century fiction.
Post 8vo (21cm). (288)pp. Original tangerine cloth, blocked in green and lettered in gilt; light spotting of edges and endpapers, but otherwise a very good copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket very lightly marked, with a handful of nicks and short repaired tears, but complete and attractive still.

£50

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London : Faber & Faber, (1970). First edition. “As a writer, Mr. Durrell does not believe in doing things singly. He has followed up his beautifully-written Alexandria quartet of novels with a very strange but equally compelling double-decker of which Nunquam is the second volume ... pure fantasy. But built into them are a host of impish, tongue-in-cheek digs at modern literature, poetry, science, and religion” (Bristol Evening Post, 26th March 1970).
Post 8vo (21cm). (286),[ii]pp. Original dark green cloth, lettered in gilt; just a hint of rubbing; top edge a little spotted, but otherwise a very good, bright and sound copy in the dust-jacket – the jacket also very good.

£25

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Edinburgh : Privately Printed at the Tragara Press, (1974). First edition : limited to 115 numbered copies, all hand-printed. “Certain Landfalls”, “Postmark”, “Picture of Geishas”, and “A Patch of Dust” – here in an outstanding designer binding by multiple prize-winning bookbinder, Dominic Riley.
Royal 8vo (240 x 141mm). [ii],[10],[ii],[2]pp. Bound, retaining the original paper wrappers, in a 2003 Dominic Riley binding of red morocco, with stripes of tans, blacks and greys, with black lettering; charcoal top edge, with flicks of gilt; an excellent copy, complete with its decorated clamshell cloth box.

£2,000

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London : Faber & Faber, (1982). First edition. The central volume in the Avignon Quintet series, set mainly during the Second World War, and located in France, Egypt, Poland and Switzerland. Nominated for the Booker Prize.
Post 8vo (21cm). [xii],(394),[ii]pp. Original blue boards, lettered in silver; a very good, clean and sound copy, in the original David Gentleman dust-jacket – the jacket with a few tiny spots and one slight nick, but also very good.

£25

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