Books

First UK edition, first printing, of the author's wildly successful first novel. Written and published in the United States the previous year, the work reveals Smith's yearning for home: a conscientious objector, Smith and her husband emigrated from England to the US in 1939, spending time in California, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. I Capture the Castle is "a captivating story located in a medieval castle Smith had seen at Wingfield, Suffolk, in 1934, written in the form of the diary of Cassandra Mortmain, aged seventeen, essentially based on the young Dodie" (ODNB). Octavo. Original light blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, castle vignette to front cover in gilt, top edge red. With dust jacket. Fly-titles with vignette illustrations by Ruth Steed, after sketches by the author. A little bumped; extremities of jacket lightly chipped and worn with a few short closed tears, else bright and unclipped: a near-fine copy in very good jacket.

I Capture the Castle is a novel by Dodie Smith, written in the form of the journals of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. She chronicles her eccentric family's life in their dilapidated English castle and her own coming-of-age experiences.