Holden, Inez ~ To The Boating

First UK Printing : John Lane and the Bodley Head, London : 1945

First UK Printing published by John Lane and the Bodley Head, London in 1945. Slim 8vo., lettered with pointing hand devices in black to spine; in the matching orange wrapper (7s 6d net); The BOOK very lightly sunned to spine ends and offset to paste downs; near-Fine, otherwise, in the Very Good++ WRAPPER sunned along the spine with some slight losses to spine tips and one closed tear (4cm) extending into upper panel, with associated light creasing. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, printed on War Economy Standard paper. To the Boating brings together a collection of eleven short stories, some just a few pages long, and three sketches which had previously appeared in New Writing, Harper’s Bazaar, and other publications. Predominantly a collection of wartime fiction based on her own journal entries, Orwell would later write that Holden was “an uneven writer” but praised her “remarkably lifelike dialogue” and her ability to “make a pattern” by means of individual phrases that recur “like the refrain of a song”. (Times Literary Supplement). Beatrice Inez Holden (1903-1974) was a British author and journalist whose work was admired by the likes of Graham Greene and Anthony Powell. A glamorous socialite, Holden became a close friend of, and lover to, George Orwell, after they were introduced at a dinner party held by H. G. Wells in 1941. To the Boating was published in the same year as Orwell’s Animal Farm. (Bowker, George Orwell, 2003, p. 227). An increasingly elusive title.

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