Books

First edition; large 8vo (215 x 150 mm.); some toning to margins as usual, small closed tear and ink stamp to final blank leaf; publisher's printed wrappers, 2 minor tape reinforcements to inside of each wrapper with small closed tear to top edge of lower wrapper, but overall very good. A very good example of the true first edition of The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell, published as the first volume in The Villa Seurat Series created by Henry Miller, Ana�s Nin and Durrell as an adjunct to the Obelisk Press. Faber & Faber had initially offered to publish the work in expurgated form, but Durrell declined this option on the advise of Miller; the work was not published in the UK until 1973. 'This is a wild, passionate, brilliantly gaudy and flamboyant extravaganza; it is intrinsically and essentially, the book of a young man Durrell was 24 when he wrote it richly obscene, energetically morbid, very often very funny indeed, self-pitying, but, above all, stylistically and verbally inventive as no other young man's novel of the period was even attempting to be.' (The Observer) Thomas & Bingham A8.

Regarded by Durrell as the first book in his literary career, 'The Black Book' is an autobiographical novel with a blend of modernism and surrealism. It explores the life of Lawrence Lucifer in the gloomy atmosphere of London, full of vivid imagery and unique literary style.