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First Edition. Hard cover, small 8vo, in green cloth with titles blocked in gold to the spine, in the original, unclipped dust jacket designed by the Author's sister, and fellow Bloomsbury group associate, the artist Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), signed within the printed design. Printed R.& R. Clark, Edinburgh. 469pp.** CONDITION Very Good Plus. Exterior boards with light browning (oxidation) along upper edge, and a small degree of edgewear seen at outer joint, and the spine somewhat darkened. Hinges are in order. Pages are gently age toned. Moderate foxing seen to ffep. and rear ep. Some small bits of soiling to texblock fore-edge. Otherwise, clean, square, with sharp corners. Dust jacket is Very Good, moderately browned, especially at spine, with foxing, some small open tears at joints and edges and now in a mylar protector. **"The Years," a London family saga, spans several generations of the Pargiter family from the 1880's through 1930. Pater familias Col. Pargiter, retired from service in India, his invalid wife, his mistress, many children, their friends and relations make up a panoply of inter-related characters who's life stories are interwoven poetically to reflect contemporary issues of human understanding. The politics of marriage, conscious feminism, women's suffrage, contraception, same sex relationships, The Boer War, World War I, the Irish problem, are among the Author's themes, but all alluded to rather than drawn out in great narrative detail. The main action of the plot is internal, psychological or relationship-oriented. Issues of a lack of communication between the sexes is explored, as characters are shown to continually interrupt each other's revellations, or have their own interior monologues interrupted. (Mephham, p. 120) This was considered modern, experimental writing at the time, no doubt influenced by the work of James Joyce. The work was received with particular enthusiasm in the United States, (where over 30,000 copies were sold,) finally bringing the author into financial and critical success. (J. Mepham, pp.xviii, 130). It was her last published novel, however. Vanessa Bell's abstract dustjacket design mirrors graphic elements used in the extensive painted decoration of her home Charleston Farmhouse, East Sussex, shared with Duncan Grant, seen online. REF: Kirkpatrick and Clark, A22. J. Mepham, "Virginia Woolfe, A Literary Life," (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1991.)
Ref: BLOOM 9476
$895.00