Fiction

Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

A hard to find first edition published by Heinemann, London in 1961.

Octavo, 230 pages, reproduction dust jacket. Ownership details on title; free end paper with a piece cut out. Otherwise a very clean and bright copy of an often badly foxed edition.

An old timer in the deep south-west of Western Australia spots a violent criminal on his way back to the caves of Rhudder’s Inlet. Inspecter Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte is called in with his tracker Lew. What they find leaves them shaken to the core.

Bony discovers strange goings on in the very south-west.

$60.00

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Jamaica Inn – Daphne Du Maurier – 1951 Edition

Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn vies with Rebecca as her best work… this “Cheap Edition” has become iconic.

Jamaica Inn was first published in 1936 … this is effectively the 21st impression, of 1951, with many more to come

Octavo, 208 pages, with the publisher Gollancz’s iconic yellow jacket. This is the cleanest and best early copy we have come across.

If you are in that beautiful part of England make sure you visit Jamaica Inn and read the book. Daphne gives us a useful introductory note … “Jamaica Inn stands to-day, hospitable and kindly, a temperance house on the twenty-mile road between Bodmin and Launceston” … you can get a nice drop there now and a heavy lunch!

“It was a cold grey day in November …”

$40.00

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D.H. Lawrence in Australia – Robert Darroch – First Edition 1981

A very good copy of the first edition of Darroch’s most interesting account of D.H.Lawrence Down Under.

Published by Macmillan, Melbourne in 1981. Octavo, 130 pages, nicely illustrated.

Lawrence was in Australian in 1922 during which time when in New South Wales he penned the worthy novel “Kangaroo”. A work that was once dismissed as imaginary but in fact based on a half-forgotten period of violence and hatred in Australia. As in Europe fascism was building. His protagonist Richard Lavat Somers was a writer and maybe from that fact some believed the work partly autobiographical … we doubt it.

D.H.Lawrence out and about in Australia and the making of “Kangaroo”.

$30.00

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Larger than Life – Twenty Stories by Xavier Herbert – First Edition 1963

Twenty entertainments by the distinguished author of the monumental Capricornia.

Published by Angus and Robertson. Octavo, 248 pages of solid yarns all connected to the Far North of Australia (Xavier Herbert country) ranging from Cooktown in Far North Queensland right across to Darwin in the Northern Territory. A super copy in a clean complete dust jacket of period style.

A lengthy Preface written by the author from his home on the beautiful Mossman Beach in the Far North helps the reader nicely into the collection.

Our favourites Marrying Money; Kaijek the Songman; An Eagle called Ned Kelly; Rise and Fall of Jeremiah Stacey and the last little ditty appropriately named “Last Toss”.

Superior short stories from Northmost Australia.

$35.00

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Womba – and Aboriginal Stockboy (in the Cattle Country in the Heart of Australia) – F.J. McLeod – First edition 1952.

Published by Georgian House, Melbourne, a first edition generally in very good clean condition with the super period wrap around dust jacket art.

The writer of the story of Womba had been a mounted policeman. The story centres on Dericka Station which is in the MacDonnell Ranges.

Super depiction of station life where Womba learns to break in wild colts and the mustering of cattle over the vast expanses of the station. Interactions with the local Myall tribesmen are a little mysterious.

An acceptable treatment of the subject matter especially for the period.

Womba in the MacDonnell Ranges.

$25.00

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The Fountain Overflows – Rebecca West – 1957

An early edition of this important work by Rebecca West published by MacMillan, London and nominated a “Book society choice” – a March 1957 edition after the January 1957 First.

Octavo, 392 pages, very good condition, a trifle marked on the page edges.

Rebecca West the nom de plume of Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield was named by the Times as the best female writer of the 20thC.

She maybe is even more famous for her lengthy romance with HG Wells despite his 27 years on her of his already marriage. They had a child, Anthony west, who also became a writer. He wrote a fictionalised biography of HG Wells that did not show Rebecca (or Cicily) in a good light … they never spoke again; and it was worse than that.

The Fountain Overflows can be understood from the Blake quote on the title page … “The cistern contains: the fountain overflows”. Essentially and autobiographically inspired novel concerning the Aubrey family in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Later Rebecca west would write two further extensions … one published posthumously. She lived then in a large apartment overlooking Hyde Park. Unfortunately, next to the Iranian Embassy and had to be evacuated when it was under siege … if you remember all that. I her final years she was friends with Frankie Hawerd so must have had some fun.

Rebecca West an extraordinary life and this novel encapsulates some of it.

$30.00

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Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

Jamaica Inn – Daphne Du Maurier – 1951 Edition

D.H. Lawrence in Australia – Robert Darroch – First Edition 1981

Larger than Life – Twenty Stories by Xavier Herbert – First Edition 1963

Womba – and Aboriginal Stockboy (in the Cattle Country in the Heart of Australia) – F.J. McLeod – First edition 1952.

The Fountain Overflows – Rebecca West – 1957

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