LESSING, Doris ~ Briefing for a Descent into Hell. Signed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Jonathan Cape, London: 1971.

8vo., brown publisher's boards, lettered in gilt to spine with Cape device to foot; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (£1.60 net to front flap) featuring a design by Alan Tunbridge; upper edge stained purple; THE BOOK a near fine copy, a little bumped to spine tips, and some occasional spots to the outer edges of the text block; otherwise clean and bright; THE WRAPPER similarly near-fine, with a little marginal toning. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION, this copy signed by the author in blue ink to the title page. Lessing's fourth full-length novel, published just a few years after the success of 'The Golden Notebook' and a psychological thriller which begins with a Cambridge Professor, found wandering the streets of London in a disheveled state, who is unable to remember anything about his life or where he came from. The plot develops as a series of doctors and nurses attempt to 'cure' his madness - while he descends further into fantasies of being adrift on a raft in the Atlantic and flying through outer space. "Lessing believes that society's treatment of the mentally ill is civilisation's biggest and blackest blindspot" the dustwrapper notes. The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in the year of publication.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine