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Hard cover, 8vo., [2], 314, [4] pp. In publisher's orange cloth binding with black lettering to spine. In the original unclipped dust jacket. No other stated printings. **CONDITION: Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. Foxing to fore-edge of text block visible when book closed. Otherwise clean, with no inscription. Dust jacket has dust-soiling and some closed tears to top edge. ** An odd assortment of British writers combine to make this anthology of short stories published between the wars strangely compelling. The writers were connected in real life (e.g. John Gawsworth gave Hugh MacDiarmid a place to stay in London, and was a huge admirer of Arthur Machen), but as writers they showcase a wide array of styles: MacDiarmid writes Scots dialect in a modernist style worthy of Joyce's Molly Bloom, Machen sees ancient ritual in the streets of modern London, and T.F. Powys creates a study of a marginalized Eleanor Rigby-like woman, tending to an abandoned church. The introduction by John Rowland insists that these works thus assembled convey a "message", discernible by the "sensitive reader". Every reader will no doubt have their own response to these sometimes unsettling vignettes, whose shared characteristic is of lives lived on the edge.** Editor John Herbert Shelley Rowland (1907-1984) was the author of a number of detective novels such as "Death on Dartmoor" (1936), "The Cornish Riviera Mystery" (1939), and "Gunpowder Alley" (1941). A scarce title. (AJ)
Ref: AMACH 9619
$245.00