Books

HARDBACK - A very good book, bound in the publisher's scarce variant black cloth boards with bright gilt lettering to the spine. There is foxing to the page blocks, but the inner text is clean. There is a previous owner stamp to the front paste down, also with a small book seller's label, also on the lower front paste down. The dust wrapper is in near very good condition with shallow chipping to the spine tips, also to the corners of the front and rear flap folds. There is quite heavy foxing to the rear panel, more so to the rear fold. The publisher's printed price of 18s net is present to the front flap.

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.