O’CONNOR, John ~ A Pattern of People. Inscribed by the author.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Hutchinson, London: 1959.

Large 8vo., bright blue cloth, lettered in gilt to spine; bright orange endpapers; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (21s net to front flap); containing numerous blue, pink and yellow tinged wood engravings throughout; THE BOOK with the odd spot/finger mark, perhaps a tad bumped to spine tips but otherwise very near-fine; THE WRAPPER a little rubbed to head and foot of spine and a little browning to folds, but otherwise also near-fine, seldom found in this condition. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK EDITION, this copy neatly inscribed by O'Connor to the half title to 'Michael'. John Scorror O’Connor was born in Leicester in 1913 and later attended the Royal College of Art, where his teachers included Eric Ravilious, John Nash and Robert Austin. He served in the RAF between 1940 to 1946, and later became principal of Colchester School of Art, where his colleagues included Richard Chopping (of James Bond dustwrapper fame), his own former teacher John Nash, and Edward Bawden. In 1990 he became an Honorary Member of the Society of Wood Engravers. 'A Pattern of People' demonstrates O'Connor's profound love of countryside as well as coastal scenes. The thirty eight engravings are each accompanied by eighteen essays, and are in many respects autobiographical. "The work of the painter and wood engraver John O'Connor...is filled with a profound - almost romantic - love of the natural world", The Guardian wrote in 2004, on the occasion of his death. "He had a pastoral vision, albeit one imbued with melancholy, at the passing of time and a changing world." Scarce thus.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine