Lot 229D email save

Durrell (Lawrence) Quaint Fragment,1st,1931

Sign In to see what this sold for

first edition, printed in red and black, mounted portrait (actual photograph) tipped in as frontispiece following title, with guard, mount with small crease at corner, pencil note on front free endpaper "Cecil Jeffrey's first printed book December 1931", endpapers a little foxed, original bronze paper-backed crimson cloth, uncut, spine a little rubbed with slight wear to head and foot, overall a very good copy, 8vo, Cecil Press, 1931.

***The author's very scarce first book, one of only a few copies printed. It contains his poems written during the ages of sixteen and nineteen. "'Never published. Cecil Jeffries bought a hand press and asked me to give him something to practise with; poems were easier than prose so I gave him an old notebook with roughs. Title was his. We took two pulls I think before the type was dispersed. One copy bound.' This book is extremely rare, but Durrell's statement that only one copy was bound is an exaggeration. Three or four have passed through the antiquarian book market in the last ten years, and one copy, left behind in Corfu, was destroyed." Alan Thomas in his bibliography for G.S.Fraser's Lawrence Durell: A Study, 1968. Only 2 copies have appeared at auction in the last 30 years, the most recent being the Bradley Martin copy in 1990. .

View Bloomsbury Auctions next auction.

Similar lots up for auction