INSCRIBED IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION TO FELLOW AUTHOR HELEN BLACK

FITZGERALD, Penelope ~ Innocence. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Collins, London: 1986.

8vo., publisher's terracotta boards lettered in gilt to spine with publisher's device in gilt to foot; together in the unclipped pictorial wrapper (£9.95 net to front flap) featuring a detail taken from 'The Annunciation' by Pontormo in S. Michele, Carmignano, Florence; The BOOK with tiny bruises to spine tips and a couple of tiny spots to the upper edge of the text block, else fine; The WRAPPER sunned to the backstrip and with a couple of very minor creases to the edges and folds, otherwise very good ++. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION, this copy neatly signed by the author beneath her crossed-out name to the title, and with an inscription above in the year of publication: "Helen - / With love and best wishes / October 1986". This copy also comes with a newspaper cutting with a review of the book, and a postcard featuring the cover image, also written to Helen Black from the author, and dated 'July 17th' (no date). In it, Fitzgerald refers to a friend who had just given birth to a baby boy, "who looks like an angel at the moment" and "she's back (after 24 hours) doing the cooking". "Didn't we used to stay in bed 10 days?" she concludes, "I can't get used to it - love Penelope." The sixth novel by the Booker prize-winning author, set in Italy in the 1950s, and one of four historical novels published towards the end of her career. Fitzgerald was almost 70 years old when the book was published, and had moved away from the works which had been rooted in her own personal experiences, and towards peoples, cultures and countries which did not closely mirror her own life. "[I] had finished writing about the things in my own life, which I wanted to write about", she claimed. The author had traveled many times to Italy, and her husband Desmond had served in the country during the Second World War. Drawing directly from these inspirations, Fitzgerald crafts a narrative in post-war Italy, and surrounding the Ridolfi family, a family of Florentine lineage. The plot focuses on Chiara, the eighteen year old daughter who has her sights set on Salvatore, a young and fiercely independent doctor, and combines their love story with the politics of family, money, and tradition. "Such people tend to think that love in itself is sufficient" Julian Barnes wrote of Fitzgerald's 'Italian Novel', "and that happiness might be its merited consequence. They speak their minds at the wrong time and in the wrong way; they deal in a kind of robustly harmful innocence." A lovely example and scarce with such attributes.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good ++