Scarce with the wrapper

Holden, Inez ~ The Owner

Sole UK Printing : The Bodley Head Limited, London : 1952

The sole UK Printing published by The Bodley Head Limited, London in 1952. Large 8vo., green cloth, backstrip lettered in black with decorative border to titles; complete in the wrapper (clipped, but retaining the 12s 6d net price), featuring a photograph of the author to the lower flap; The BOOK a Very Good++ copy, lightly spotted to text-block and offset to endpapers; some marginal sunning and light marks to extreme edges of the boards; light ghosting to the spine. The Very Good++ WRAPPER creased and nicked to edges with a couple of longer closed tears (not exceeding 1.5cm), rubbed with some shelf marking to the lower panel. No fading or toning to the spine. A light water stain to the lower edge of the rear panel, barely discernible. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. Inez Holden was an English writer, journalist, and bohemian social figure, whose early writing career began with her work for the Daily Express, and short stories she contributed to The Evening Standard and the Manchester Guardian. She was one of just a handful of female writers to be published by Cyril Connolly’s magazine Horizon in the 1940s, and she was later sent to report on the Nuremberg trials. She maintained friendships with H. G. Wells, Stevie Smith, Anthony Powell and George Orwell, the latter with whom she became a lover. She wrote ten books in her lifetime, of which The Owner was her second to last. It follows the story of struggling protagonist Charles Veneer in a “humorous but ironical story…a study of snobbery and self-deception…the portrayal of a state of mind independently of place, time or circumstance.” (wrapper blurb). Increasingly elusive with the wrapper.

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