Graham Greene – It’s A Battlefield – First UK Edition 1934 – SIGNED and INSCRIBED

Description

First edition, first printing. Published by Heinemann in London, 1934. This is a very good (or better) copy. The supplied dust wrapper, designed by Youngman Carter being the true first issue (7/6) has some mild creasing throughout, and some moderate separation at the spine tips. The rear panel is markedly bright. Internally, there is some slight foxing to the preliminaries and also some to the latter pages. Bound in the original black cloth, with the publisher’s device blind-stamped to the lower front board, with a slight ring to the front. The hinges are tight and unrestored. The author’s signature is present on the front fly leaf, inscribed to ‘Clive, affectionately’ in black ink. The recipient Clive Francis is a British actor, known for his roles in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Clockwork Orange’, ‘Inspector Clouseau’ and ‘The Crown’ and was a friend of Greene’s. Provenance: Christie’s, Nov. 1994. Though at first it sold few copies, the novel was praised by Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford. Writing in the Spectator, V. S. Pritchett found great merit in what he called an adventurous, intelligent, genuine modern novel. The New York Times thought it engrossing, alive, and decidedly well worth reading. That reviewer praised Greene’s cinematographic style, and Greene later said that the novel was intentionally based on film technique (Surprisingly, and to Greene’s lasting amusement, it was one of the few novels he wrote that was never made into a film.) The novel’s style is also influenced by Ulysses, The Waste Land, Mrs Dalloway and, as Greene admitted, Joseph Conrad. He alludes to Conrad by naming Drover’s brother after him. Graham Greene later described it as his first overtly political novel. Its theme, said Greene, is the injustice of man’s justice. Later in life, Greene classified his major books as novels and his lighter works as entertainments; he ranked It’s a Battlefield as a novel and not a mere entertainment.