Books

First edition, first impression, presentation copy to Penelope Betjeman, the wife of the poet John Betjeman, inscribed by the author on the title page "For Penelope As always with my fondest love Bruce Sept '82". Chatwin was friends with Penelope for many years and the pair travelled together. After the breakdown of his marriage, Chatwin frequently visited her cottage above Hay-on-Wye, Penelope telling him that the stories there "are just as good as all those things in Patagonia you write about"; he stated in turn that she became "a sort of mother to me" (Nicholas Shakespeare, Bruce Chatwin, p. 377). His stays with her in the area no doubt shaped On the Black Hill, his first novel, set in a rural farm on the Welsh border. Penelope is the inspiration for the character Philippa in the story (ibid.). Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Slight lean to spine, spotting to edges and toning around peripheries; a very good copy in like jacket, lightly toned, minor rubbing.

On the Black Hill is a novel by Bruce Chatwin published in 1982. The story is a chronicle of 80 years in the lives of the identical twin brothers Lewis and Benjamin Jones, who live on a farm on the English-Welsh border, a region Chatwin famously dubbed 'the Black Hill'.