In the striking Trekkie Ritchie Parsons wrapper

Sackville-West, Vita ~ All Passion Spent

The Hogarth Press, London : 1931

The First UK printing published by the Hogarth Press, London in 1931. Original pale green cloth lettered in gilt to the backstrip; in the exceptional wrapper correctly priced '7/6 net' to spine, featuring a design by Trekkie Ritchie (Parsons) with flowers in a vase overlooking windows and a countryside scene; The BOOK is in near Fine condition, aside from very mild bubbling to the spine and light pushing to the tips; the odd spot to the fore-edge; small sticker of Emily Mundy's Bookshop to the rear paste-down; The WRAPPER also excellent, is in Very Good++ condition with a touch of toning along the backstrip with some light chipping mostly affecting the upper spine, but not the titling; completely unrestored. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. Arguably Vita Sackville-West's masterpiece, 'All Passion Spent' has sometimes been described as a fictional companion piece to Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'. In it, an elderly aristocrat Deborah, Lady Slane, attempts to embrace freedom after the death of her husband. Looking back on her life and her aspirations before marriage, she chooses to escape to a rented house in Hampstead where, to the surprise of everyone, she revels in her new-found freedom, stating, famously "I am going to become completely self-indulgent. I am going to wallow in old age." A novel which confounds many of the stereotypical views of the elderly in Literature, Sackville-West explores the possibility of living to one's own desires, even late in life. While her friend and lover Virginia Woolf once, years early, described the necessity of women taking 'a room of one's own', Sackville-West now depicts one such woman taking full advantage of that new-found freedom. A "funny and enchanting book" Joanna Lumley, who provided the foreword to a later edition wrote, "she follows her heart and memories. It makes growing old make sense.” Trekkie Ritchie (Parsons) was an English lithographer and artist who later became the lover of Leonard Woolf. It was between the two World Wars that she was introduced to the Woolfs through her sister, Alice, and she produced several wrappers for publications from their Hogarth Press, of which this particular title is perhaps one of her more famous. Seldom found in such superior condition. (Cross and Ravenscroft-Hulme A.21a : Woolmer 270).

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