Quite heavily used, extremities of binding worn, binding cracked before title page. With David Cornwell’s youthful ownership inscription “CORNWELL, D.J.M. Tunmers, Chalfont St. Peter Bucks” (Tunmers was Ronnie Cornwell’s 1930s mansion where he famously entertained the touring Australian cricket team), and annotated throughout by him, with several poems (including his original translation of a poem by Theodor Körner) transcribed on the endpapers, with a small caricature of a head.
Cornwell was to use the name Fiedler for an East German spymaster in The Spy who came in from the Cold.
The annotations to the poems appear to reflect scholarly work by the student Cornwell, and observations from much later in his life, offering a rare access to a reflective Cornwell. In particular it is tempting to read his notes on the second part of Goethe’s “Wandrers Nachtlieb” on p. 73 as feeding into his recreation of Magnus Pym’s return to the haunts of childhood: “written 1780 on the wall of a mountain hut near Ilmenau. 50 years later, aged 82, he revisited the spot, & reportedly repeated the lines with a sigh”. Cornwell was also to use the name Fiedler for an East German spymaster in The Spy who came in from the Cold.
From the library of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré.
Maggs Bros. Ltd., Catalogue 1526, John Le Carré: Books from The Library of Jane and David Cornwell at Tregiffian, Item 70.
