A presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the front free end paper: ‘Alfred from Leslie with my love June 1924’.
Hartley’s first published work, a collection of seventeen short stories of the supernatural and macabre, some of which first appeared in the undergraduate magazine the Oxford Outlook, which he edited during his time at the university.
Hartley published eighteen novels and six volumes of short stories, he was a highly respected literary critic and was made a CBE as well as a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. His best known work and long considered his finest, the novel, The Go-Between was a critical and popular success, and was made into a film in 1971 with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.
Hartley was an accomplished author of supernatural fiction, his close friend, Lord David Cecil, described him as ‘One of the most distinguished of modern novelists; and one of the most original. For the world of his creation is composed of such diverse elements. On the one hand he is a keen and accurate observer of the processes of human thought and feeling; he is also a sharp-eyed chronicler of the social scene. But his picture of both is transformed by the light of a Gothic imagination that reveals itself now in a fanciful reverie, now in the mingled dark and gleam of a mysterious light and a mysterious darkness … Such is the vision of life presented in [his] novels.’
An exceptional copy in near fine condition, extremely unusual to find in such good condition. The top of the jacket spine panel is a little creased, the top edge of the cloth is a little faded, and there is a small green mark to the rear cover. Offsetting to the endpapers, and very light spotting to the endpapers and prelims.
