AMIS, Kingsley ~ The Green Man. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Jonathan Cape, London: 1969.

8vo., dark blue boards lettered in gilt to spine with Cape device to foot; upper edge stained black; in the roughly clipped dustwrapper featuring a wraparound design by Colin Andrews; THE BOOK a very good plus copy, some very faint scratches to boards and upper edge of text block, with one bubble to the lower cover; small abrasion from erased name to ffep; else a bright example; THE WRAPPER also very good plus, lightly and evenly sunned along the backstrip. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing. This copy neatly signed by the author in black ink to the title page. Written some fifteen years after the success of 'Lucky Jim', 'The Green Man' is a combination of ghost story and fable, combined with the guileless wit for which the author was best known. The title is derived from the novel's setting - a coaching inn - and within it the landlord Maurice Allington battles with family dilemmas, alcoholism, and staff crisis, turning to the resident ghost (a proprietor of black magic) to ease his woes. 'The Green Man' was Amis's first foray into the genre of the supernatural, and a darkly comic work which some have compared to M. R. James and Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' for its cantankerous, unlikable protagonist, drawn to redemption through his encounter with a series of spirits.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very good +
JACKET: Very Good +