ONE OF JUST 30 SPECIAL NUMBERED COPIES.

[DURRELL, Lawrence] ~ Labrys 5. July 1979. With the signed Durrell Bookplate to the inside front cover.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Labrys/Hunting Raven Press: Frome, 1979.

8vo., original cream wraps, printed in blue and grey; featuring one black and white photograph of Durrell; THE BOOK a very near fine copy, though with the glue to backstrip just beginning to come away, causing some detaching to the foot of the ffep. The book is protected in a removable mylar sleeve. FIRST UK EDITION of this literary periodical focusing on the work of Lawrence Durrell with his own contributions. This a special edition, with Durrell's bookplate to the inside front cover, signed and dated by him in black ink and numbered 29/30 copies only. Labrys was a literary journal edited and published by Grahaeme Barrasford Young and John Matthews, both English writers and editors, with the intention of promoting individual writers across each issue. Here, contributors such as David Gascoyne, Freya Stark and Henry Miller contribute pieces on Durrell's life and work, with Miller writing that he "is to me the finest writer in the English language today... And being the sort of writer he is he had to leave bloody England and nourish his soul in the "Mediterranean world". Today he is a thorough Mediterranean spirit... As a man and a friend (a perennial) I have the greatest affection and reverence for him. He is the embodiment of humor, joviality, esoteric wisdom and enlightenment". "I cannot help but add that he makes the usual British (apologetic) writer seem like a puling idiot", he continues, "He has forged a language all of his own. It will live; it will outlive Shakespeare and all your other idols' work." Scarce indeed.

BINDING: Softcover
CONDITION: Near Fine