James Cummins Bookseller

London: Heinemann, [1951-1975].

Price: $7,500.00

About the item

First edition. 12 vols. 8vo. Red cloth, pictorial dust jackets. Question of Upbringing very good (text block toned, jacket rubbed with split at front flap), Buyer’s Market very good (small loss to foot of front panel); some faint toning to spine panels, other volumes very good plus/near fine or better in dust jacket; Casanova’s Chinese & Temporary Kings price clipped; 5 titles with pencil owner signature of Claude Smith, cartoonist).

Item #307304

“I’m reading Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, an hilarious and very good work. The only book I know that takes Proust’s habitual narrative gestures, Anglicizes them, and succeeds in the effort. In fact, Powell is the best critical study of Proust.” — Guy Davenport.

The author‘s stand-in, Nick Jenkins, moves at all levels of British society and his recurring ecounters with schoolmates, rivals, opportunites, relics, and schemers offers Powell the greatest range for the tricky acrobatics of his prose. An attractive set of first editions of this landmark of twentieth-century British literature. Comprising:

1. A Question of Upbringing, 1951
2. A Buyer’s Market, 1952
3. The Acceptance World, 1955
4. At Lady Molly’s, 1957
5. Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, 1960
6. The Kindly Ones, 1962
7. The Valley of Bones, 1964
8. The Soldier’s Art, 1966
9. The Military Philosophers, 1968
10. Books Do Furnish a Room, 1971
11. Temporary Kings, 1973
12. Hearing Secret Harmonies, 1975.