Books

1st Edition. Hardcover. True First Edition in Black Boards. Crown 8vo, pp. 283. An exception copy of what is likely the original trial or advance binding preceding the usual brown cloth. In all likelihood a miniscule number of these black cloth bindings were distributed. Judging from the handful that have turned up over the last decade, perhaps as few as a couple of dozen. A fine copy in a very fine, bright price-clipped dustwrapper [All copies of the black binding have had their wrappers price-clipped]. Curiously there is the slightest variance in ink colour in the dustwrapper of this issue, more cyan & less magenta perhaps but there it is, none-the-less. Likely a function of the earliest part of the press run being responsible for the variation. A very fine exceptional copy of Fowles's breakthrough novel.

The Collector is the debut novel of English author John Fowles. It was first published in 1963 by Jonathan Cape and is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall and collects butterflies in his spare time. Clegg is infatuated with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Art. Unable to make any contact with her but obsessed with his unrelenting desire, Clegg decides to add her to his 'collections' by kidnapping her and holding her captive in the cellar of his rural farmhouse. What follows is a chilling exploration of power, art, freedom, and the consequences of human actions.