FIRST EDITIONS AND MODERN GREATS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951. First edition. His first and most famous novel, based on his own army experiences in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed. An immediate success, winner of the National Book Award, always included in lists of the major novels of the twentieth century, and the basis of the memorable and multiple Oscar-winning 1953 film, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, etc.
Demy 8vo (207 x 136mm). [xii],(862)pp. Bound in an elegant recent half black morocco, by Bayntun-Riviere; top edge gilt; marbled sides and endleaves; very faint crease to the final leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy, clean and sound.

£500

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London : Chatto & Windus, 1968. First edition. His first novel, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize – set in London and the South of France – “cold indifference ... tugs at them like a dirty wind”.
Post 8vo (21cm). 222,[ii]pp. Original black boards, lettered in gilt; very good in the dust-jacket, also very good.

£25

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London : MacGibbon & Kee, (1969). First collected edition of the celebrated London trilogy – the powerful MacInnes novels originally published separately between 1957 and 1960, and treating in full-on fashion the social phenomena of the era – the first wave of black immigration, the emergence of the teenager as an economic entity, and the eternal trinity of prostitutes, ponces and policemen – “themes of which no other contemporary novelist has yet shown himself properly aware ... No responsible novelist before Mr MacInnes had taken the trouble to find out” (from the introduction by Francis Wyndham).
Medium 8vo (24cm). [2],x,626,[ii]pp. Original grey canvas; red title-panel, blocked and lettered in gilt; top edge purple; a few faint marks and minor signs of age of use, but a good and sound copy in the Horace Ové dust-jacket – the jacket lightly worn, with a few short tears, a light patch of mild discolouration at head, and slight spotting to the flaps, but complete and striking still.

£50

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London : Constable & Co., (1948). First British edition. A selection of over seventy of the best of the short stories and articles arranged under various headings. Includes “Tripping over Trivia”, “Horse Sense”, “Larcenous Ladies”, “A Dog’s Best Friend”, “Smoking Ladies”, etc.
Crown 8vo (20cm). 278,[ii]pp. Frontispiece. Original dark green cloth, lettered in silver; a very good and bright copy in the original pale blue dust-jacket, printed in red and darker blue – slightly sunned and a just a little marked.

£25

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London : William Heinemann, (1949). First British edition. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board” – the travails of Cassandra Mortmain. Her first novel – an eccentric classic brought to an even wider audience by the 2003 film with Bill Nighy, Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, etc.
Crown 8vo (185 x 122mm). [iv],338pp. Illustrations by Ruth Steed (from sketches by the author). Bound in a smart recent half blue morocco, banded and gilt; red label; marbled sides; top edge red; some spotting to edges, but otherwise a very good copy in an elegant binding.

£500

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London : William Heinemann, (1962). First edition. The first novel in the “Spiral Ascent” trilogy – failed poets and communism in the 1930s – “I believe that it may well be the first part of one of the greatest and most original novels of our time” (Christopher Isherwood).
Crown 8vo (20cm). [vi],282pp. Original green boards, lettered in white; a very good copy in the Brian Russell dust-jacket – a stylish architectural design in mauve and tan – also very good.

£50

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