Angus, John ~ The Homecoming

First UK Printing : Hutchinson & Co., London : 1935

The First UK Printing published by Hutchinson & Co., London in 1935. 8vo., black cloth lettered in yellow to upper cover and along backstrip; housed in the vibrant pictorial wrapper featuring two figures by a river, one in the water, and a man swathed in tartan (priced 7/6 net to spine); THE BOOK is in Very Good condition, with slight shelf-lean, light cup ring to the upper board, minor easing at the spine, with pushing to the spine tips; front free endpapers and prelims mildly spotted and offset, a couple of small spots and corner creases to pages; previous ownership name and address to verso of the front free endpaper; the near-Fine WRAPPER with just minor shelf-wear and creasing, exceptionally clean and with central image retaining all of its original colour. The Clement Cowles wrapper artwork is striking in the removable Brodart archival cover. The author’s very scarce second and last novel following ‘The Sheltering Pine’ (1934), which focused on a man living under the protection and guidance of the ancient spirits of a pine tree. The Homecoming is also a supernatural fantasy tale set in Scotland, and involves warlocks, immortality, sorcery, battles and murder. The plot centres around a protagonist - James Ogilvie - and places him in the middle of a fifteenth-century conflict between the Ogilvies and the Lindsays. John Angus (1906-1968) was born in Montrose, and set the majority of his work in and around Glenesk, which sits in the shadow of the great Cairngorm Mountains, and which was an area he loved deeply. Geoffrey Clement Cowles [also known as Clement Cowles] was born in Lambourne, Berkshire England in 1894 and was active as a painter and commercial artist in the UK from c.1915 to the early 1970s. Mostly working with watercolours, he painted several landscapes of St Clement’s, Jersey, and the Channel Islands, as well as an iconic poster, one copy of which is now housed at MoMa in New York, entitled ‘Stop Knocking Use BP Ethyl’ - advertising a substance added to motor fuel to prevent loud engine knocking. “A story of queer beauty, stimulating the imagination and providing for the jaded reader an experience seldom to be met in present-day fiction.” (Wrapper blurb).

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Near Fine