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First impression of the true first edition. ***Very good in buff-coloured cloth-covered boards with dark blue titles to spine. Contemporaneous owner's name, place and date to top of front free endpaper in blue fountain-pen ink: 'M. K. Flint, Stratford, Aug '43'. Edges of boards slightly rubbed. Slight spine lean. Top corners of rear board slightly bumped. Spine tight. No foxing. Pages clean. ***In a very good dustwrapper, illustrated by Mervyn Peake, with red and black titles, that has not been price-clipped, showing original publisher's price of 6s. net. Edges of dustwrapper creased and rubbed. Two short closed tears to top of front panel of dustwrapper. Two short closed tears to bottom of front panel of dustwrapper. One short close tear to top edge of rear panel of dustwrapper. Small loss to head of spine of dustwrapper. Spine and edges of dustwrapper darkened. ***206mm x138mm. 124 pages. ***'C. E. M. Joad's Young Soldier goes on a pilgrimage to find the Better World that has been promised him after the war. He meets in turn a disillusioned old hand, all cynicism, a statesman, all platitudes, Mr. Escapegoat, the diplomat, and the Reverend Hateman, the clergyman, lashed to their weather vanes and singing psalms of hate and destruction in a storm to Wagnerian music, Mr. Transporthouse with his puppets, Mr. Ema and Miss Ame, planning his ameliorated world of thinner bread and thicker butter for the masses, spread with jam in the shape of education up to university standard and honey in the form of labour-saving flats and a preserved country-side, not to speak of subsidised opera companies, repertory companies, concert companies and travelling picture shows; the Ultra-red Robot insisting that there will be no butter, no jam and no honey because if heads are hard, pillows will be hard too, and the Red-tape Worm pointing out on the contrary that, if the pillows are soft, the heads must be soft as well, and planning accordingly a Brave New World in which universal softness prevails; a chorus of Astrologers, Theosophists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists and Oxford Groupers offering their different brands of aspirin for the sick headache of humanity, Mr. Heardhux, for the most part in his astral body but assuming a corporeal mouth and tongue for the purposes of discussion and prescribing withdrawal from a world that is doomed, and the philosopher, platitudinous and common-sensical, swallowing none of the recipes but stealing a little from the lot, and prescribing salvation both by faith and by works - all these characters and many more being gorgeously portrayed in the flesh by Mr. Mervyn Peake. ***At the end the Young Soldier finds, in so far as he finds anything at all, that the New World he seeks, like the God of Shaw's Black Girls, if it is anywhere at all, is inside himself.' (Quote from inside front and rear of dustwrapper blurb). ***First impression of the true first edition, illustrated throughout by Mervyn Peake, now hard to find in the original fragile wartime dustwrapper. ***Of interest to collectors of Mervyn Peake. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.
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