Books

Number 17 of 150 large paper copies printed on blue paper and signed by the author; it is "the first deluxe issue of a book by Douglas" (Woolf) and a stylish production. This is Douglas's best-known book and it enjoyed "an immediate success. Its ironic questioning of conventional morality appealed to a war-weary public, and its humane values were praised by Virginia Woolf in the Times Literary Supplement" (ODNB). Cyril Connolly remarks, "it is an astonishingly civilised and good-humoured book, full of Douglas's sanity and cobweb-sweeping charm. It contains the first futile young man, a Twenties prototype... Douglas's cackle is still infectious". Provenance: inscribed on the front free endpaper, "From the staff of the Dartmouth College Library, to William H. McCarter, Persona Grata"; McCarter (1898-1959) was an American academic who graduated from Dartmouth in 1919 and became professor of English there. Octavo. Original dark blue cloth, gilt-lettered spine gilt, covers decorated with intersecting parallel lines, all edges blue and untrimmed. Printed throughout on light blue paper. Spine slightly cocked and with shallow crease running its length. A very good copy. Connolly, Modern Movement 28; Woolf A19b.

South Wind, published in 1917, is a famed satirical novel by Norman Douglas that examines the societal norms of a small fictitious island off Italy's coast.