I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Cider With Rosie
London: The Hogarth Press, 1959. Item #02306
With the Suppressed Piano Factory Scene
LEE, Laurie. Cider With Rosie. With drawings by John Ward. London: The Hogarth Press, 1959.
First edition, the suppressed or withdrawn first issue which includes the account of the fire at the piano factory (p. 272). Octavo (7 3/4 x 5 in; 197 x 127 mm). 280 pp. Black and white line drawings throughout, some full page, including frontispiece.
Publisher's green cloth with gilt lettered spine. Original pictorial dust jacket slightly darkened on spine. Two inch tear on front of jacket, one and a half inch x half inch chip on back of jacket. A very good copy in a fair dust jacket.
The novel, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, is an account of Lee's childhood in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire, England, in the period soon after the First World War. It chronicles the traditional village life which disappeared with the advent of new developments, such as the coming of the motor car, and relates the experiences of childhood seen from many years later. The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland.
"It has got a marvellous morning freshness. There is hardly a sentence in it that does not set the sense of touch and smell, as well as sight and hearing, tingling" (Daily Mail ).
"Remains as fresh and full of joy and gratitude for youth and its sensations as when it first appeared. It sings in the memory" (Sunday Times).
"One of the great writers of the twentieth centur"y (Independent).
"An enchanting book, an exquisite farewell, not only to childhood, and boyhood, but also to an England that has vanished" (JB Priestly).
"He had a nightingale inside him, a capacity for sensuous, lyrical precision" (Guardian ).
Price: $250.00