Books

First edition, first impression, of the author's rare Gothic novel, which "lurks somewhere between the territory of Beardsley and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast... shudderingly enjoyable" (Guardian). Muriel Spark began working as an editor for Peter Owen in the mid-1950s while waiting for her first novel to be published. She found this title "almost impenetrable" to edit, but it has since been hailed as a key work in surrealist and esoteric fiction. Colquhoun created a series of watercolour paintings to accompany the tale, but did not live to see the eventual posthumous publication of an illustrated edition in 2018. A celebrated artist and occultist who was expelled from the English Surrealist Group for refusing to abandon her occult research, Colquhoun "is becoming recognized as one of the most interesting and prolific esoteric thinkers and artists of the twentieth century" (Hale). At the time of writing she lived in Paul, Cornwall, and her writing and art are infused with its landscape. Octavo. Original blue boards, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Jacket unclipped, spine slightly faded: a fine copy in like jacket. Amy Hale, "The Magical Life of Ithell Colquhoun", Nevill Drury, ed., Pathways in Modern Western Magic, 2012.